EWU to face MSU
It's a good thing we told you in the advance the Big Sky Conference women's basketball court at Eastern Washington's Reese Court was all about parity or you might think the first day was full of upsets with the No. 6 and No. 5 seeds winning. What was upsetting is they won big, No. 6 Montana State 89-66 over No. 3 Sacramento State and No. 5 Portland State 75-61 over No. 4 Idaho State.
Today's schedule has PSU against No. 2 Montana at 3:30 and MSU against No. 1 EWU at 6. We have a quick look at the Eagle matchup below.
In other news, Washington State lost by two to Arizona at the Pac-10 Tournament (look for Vince Grippi's post shortly) and last night Idaho won it's WAC opener and faces league champion Fresno State on Friday.
A short bracketology update: ESPN has Gonzaga as a No. 7 at Notre Dame against Middle Tennessee, which thundered the Zags in their first NCAA Tournament in 2007, College RPI has them as an 8 in Minneapolis against North Carolina; both those have EWU/Big Sky as a 16 at Stanford; and Realtime RPI has GU as a 5 in Austin against Bowling Green with EWU as a 15 in Tempe against Notre Dame.
By Dave Trimmer
davet@spokesman.com; (509) 927-2154
As time wound down on sixth-seeded
“The one thing is
The Bobcats (17-13) beat the Hornets (15-15) by nine and 11 in a pair of high scoring games in the regular season. In turn, the Eagles (19-10) beat MSU by six and seven in two much lower scoring games.
“They look different than when we played because we’re so different than
The Bobcats shot 50 percent in both halves, leading 45-31 after the first.
“Its two completely different teams,” Bobcats coach Trish Binford said. “Eastern’s in first place for a reason. Eastern’s a lot bigger, they slow it down. Eastern’s got a lot of post players, is extremely balanced inside and outside, they don’t make a lot of mistakes and they play very unselfish basketball.”
Against
Senior Jamie Thornton (
“I don’t know if there is a particular player-to-player matchup,” Schuller said. “One thing we’re going to have to do is score some points.”
Charday Hunt and Emily Christensen had 15 apiece for the Hornets with Christensen grabbing 11 rebounds.
With a strong local flavor, fifth-seeded
Juniors Kelli Valentine (Mead) and Kelly Marchant had 14 points and Lexi Bishop (Shadle Park) matched her career high with 13 for PSU (16-14), which led 41-30 at the half.
Oana Icovita had 22 for ISU (15-15).