Eags fall at home to Missouri-KC
Eastern Washington University's men's basketball team loss at home for the first time this season Thursday night, falling to undersized Missouri-Kansas City 68-61.
It wasn't a great night for the Eagles -- or the media assigned to cover them. I missed the game because of the snow storm, and the Eags' play-by-play radio announcer Larry Weir was reportedly stranded in Seattle and wasn't there, either.
I was told that Larry had hoped to broadcast the game off the Big Sky Conference's streaming video, but that apparently malfunctioned, leaving officials with no way to get the game on the radio.
In any event, I've posted the game story I cobbled together -- complete with post-game quotes from EWU coach Kirk Earlywine that were supplied by Eastern's sports information office -- below. And be sure to check back tomorrow for a day-after story and, hopefully, an explanation on why the Eagles' leading scorer, Benny Valentine, was held out of the starting lineup.
The loss was the second straight for the Eagles (6-4) and came despite the efforts of junior center Brandon Moore, who finished with a team-high 16 points, and senior guard Andy Genao, who added 14.
Missouri-KC (5-8) was paced offensively by Spencer Johnson, who tossed in a game-high 23 points and pulled down 11 rebounds before fouling out with 16 seconds left in the game, which was played in front of a reported crowd of 1,042.
The loss left second-year Eagles coach Kirk Earlywine upset with his team’s effort.
“We were outrebounded (36-35) by a team with a 6-foot-6 center,” Earlywine said. “We took 14 3-pointers when we had such a huge size advantage, and all we had to do was keep pounding it into the post.
“More than anything else, we had a couple of guys whose minds weren’t right. When you have guys on the floor who aren’t on the same page with the coach and the rest of the team, it is pretty difficult to win.”
Eastern, after forging a 35-32 halftime lead behind the scoring of Moore and Genao, who both went into intermission with 12 points, bumped its advantage to 41-32 on 3-pointers by Milan Stanojevic and Trey Gross to open the second period.
But Missouri-KC scrapped back to take a 46-45 lead on a free throw by Bakari Lewis, who finished with 14 points, with 11:21 remaining.
The two teams swapped leads on the next few possessions and EWU tied the game at 59 on a pair of free throws by
Eastern shot a respectable 42.6 percent (20 of 47) from the field, but got only two points from leading scorer Benny Valentine, who went 1-for-9 from the floor and missed all five 3-point shots he attempted. In addition, the Eagles turned the ball over 12 times, while the Kangaroos gave it up on only five occasions. And they made only 18 of 32 free-throw tries.
“One of the factors was the fact that we had eight turnovers in the first eight minutes of the second half,” Earlywine said.
Eastern travels to