Eastern can’t afford to look past UC Davis

The task at hand is simple for the Eastern Washington football coaches.

Prepare the Eagles for Saturday’s season-ending game against UC Davis, pray, light candles, poke voodoo dolls.

In truth, for the season to continue beyond the next game, hocus pocus is way more important than beating the Aggies at Woodward Field.

Eastern’s best – and probably only – chance to make the 16-team I-AA playoffs is to get the Big Sky Conference automatic berth as league champion. That happens only if Montana State beats Montana in Bozeman on Saturday, throwing the league into a three-team tie with the Eagles holding the tiebreaker by virtue of sweeping the Montana teams for the first time since 1992.

The No. 1 criteria for selecting the eight at-large teams for the playoffs is wins against Division I opponents. The rule of thumb is seven wins, and although the Eagles could be 7-4, one win was against Division II Western Oregon.

“I don’t see it,” Matt Dougherty, I-AA expert for The Sports Network, said. “I think there is a reason they put that seven-win criteria in there. I don’t think they want to open that door to six-win teams because you have a lot of six-win teams that can make their own case. At this point even 7-4 teams that played an all Division-I schedule are not going to make it.”

That didn’t stop Eagles coach Paul Wulff from briefly banging the drum after Saturday’s impressive 35-14 win over 11th-ranked Montana State.

“I think that seven wins still gives us a shot at (the playoffs), if (the football committee) understands that we have some of the best players in the nation,” Wulff said. “I think this team deserves (to make the playoffs) based on our ability.

“When this team’s healthy, we can beat any team in the country. We’ve proven that. I think we’re the best team in the country, but there have been some games when we haven’t been based on some issues of not playing well. But this is where we’re at.”

First off, beating Davis – which has wins over both Stanford and Cal Poly despite being 5-4 – isn’t a given, but Dougherty didn’t disagree with Wulff, despite his overall pessimism.

“If Eastern has anything working for them to somehow sneak in it’s because the Big Sky has had such a good season top to bottom,” Dougherty said. “If Montana wins you’re looking at just one team coming out of there for the playoffs.

“Outside of Northern Arizona and Sacramento State it seemed like anyone could win a game out there against anybody. Everybody got hurt by playing so many other good teams, besides playing a I-A game as well as Cal Poly. The depth is in the west this year much more so than the east.”

Unlike the selection committee for the NCAA Basketball Tournament, finishing strong, injuries and to some extent strength of schedule don’t factor into the equation with only eight spots available.

“Part of it might be it’s hard for any committee member to get a grasp on other I-AA teams (nationally) without seeing them,” Dougherty said.

If Eastern does happen to get in, look out, says Dougherty.

“(Eastern) is a team that can do damage in the playoffs, especially if they play a team that they match up well with and hasn’t seen them,” Dougherty said. “They can come out and score a ton of points on somebody. That’s a team that everyone wants to see; they would play entertaining games. I don’t think anyone wants (to play) them, they’re the type of team that can get hot over four games and has star players that can carry them.”