Eagles Not Taking Chances With Big Sky Title Ewu Can Bag The Suspense With A Victory Today Over Northridge

Somehow, it doesn’t seem like Mike Kramer and his Eastern Washington football team should be saddled with so much uncertainty.

Not after the decisive kind of season they’ve had.

The Eagles, 9-1 overall, lead the Big Sky Conference with a 6-1 record and are ranked sixth nationally in the Sports Network I-AA poll.

They are a virtual lock for a postseason berth and are a win away from the school’s first outright Big Sky championship and the automatic playoff berth that comes with it.

Yet Kramer still cannot afford the luxury of looking past this after noon’s regular-season finale against Cal State Northridge (5-5, 3-3) at 1:05 in Woodward Stadium.

A loss, he said, would make any speculation about hosting a first-round playoff game meaningless especially with each of the other Big Sky teams still having one more game to play next weekend and Montana State (5-4, 4-2) still in position to tie for the league title and capture the automatic playoff berth.

Even a win, Kramer insisted, might not guarantee a first-round home game normally awarded to the top eight seeds in the playoffs.

The NCAA’s selection committee, Kramer pointed out, is not married to any of several I-AA polls currently being conducted on a weekly basis.

“They do the seeding the way they want to do it,” he said of the eight committee members. “And they tend to do it with regard to making money and making sure the people who are going to host make money.”

Working against Eastern is its paltry attendance an average of just 3,541 for six home games.

“There’s a lot of speculation out there right now about who might get home games,” Kramer said, “but that NCAA (selection) committee is so tight-lipped about things that I think it’s easier to pick a pope. So we’re just looking for some smoke to come out of the chimney, but that’s not going to happen until next week.”

Of a more pressing concern is the smoke being generated by Northridge, a solid team with impressive wins over Boise State (63-23) and Weber State (30-20) and a record-setting quarterback in senior Aaron Flowers.

Flowers has thrown for 2,470 yards and 20 touchdowns this fall, despite missing three games with a broken leg. He torched the Eagles for 500 yards and five touchdowns in last year’s 49-27 win at Northridge.

“Flowers might be the best quarterback in the nation out of a league that traditionally produces the best quarterbacks in the nation,” Kramer said. “This summer, everybody was asking if it was going to be Northern Arizona or Montana (as the Big Sky champion), and I kept saying, ‘Hey, don’t forget Northridge,’ because Aaron Flowers put on a passing display against us last year that was impeccable.

“And regardless of their record, they might be even better than they were last year.”

Kramer hopes to counter Flowers and the Matadors’ five-wide receiver, shotgun offense with the same persistent running game that has served the Eagles so well this season. But North ridge held Eastern to a season-low 47 rushing yards last year by employing a five-man defensive front.

The Matadors had not shown that alignment this season until last week’s 31-22 win over Idaho State.

“We were thinking they were probably saving that part of their defensive package for us,” Kramer said.

“They match up very well with their defensive backs against our wide receivers, so they know they can play the rest of their defenders in the box and have an extra man against the run. It should be quite a chess match to see if we’re able to overcome that. If they have more people up front than we can block, then Harry (Leons) has to be able to the throw the ball to break things up.”

Notes

EWU running back Rex Prescott, who set school records for most rushing yards in a game (272) and a season (1,284) during last week’s 31-14 win at Northern Arizona, needs just 145 yards against Northridge to surpass Jamie Townsend’s career rushing record of 2,863… . Senior middle linebacker Marc Goodson had 16 tackles against Idaho State and became Northridge’s career leader with 263… . Last week’s win over NAU gave EWU only its third nine-win season in school history.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Graphic: Eagles vs. CSU Northridge