Stuckey, Penoncello find range as Eagles topple Bears

Once again the defense was invisible, but this time it was a temporary disappearance.

Feeding off a strong defense in the final 11 minutes, Eastern Washington pulled away to dispatch Northern Colorado 91-79 for a critical Big Sky Conference basketball win Saturday night before 3,327 fans at Reese Court.

“I thought that we played well and did a good job of keeping our defensive energy high in the last 10 minutes,” Eagles coach Mike Burns said. “I thought our effort down the stretch was great.”

It didn’t hurt that Rodney Stuckey had his best offensive production in 12 games with his 11th career 30-point game and Matt Penoncello had his best of the season with 17 clutch points off the bench.

It was that duo that broke the game open, combining for a 13-3 run that turned a 59-57 lead for Northern Colorado (3-17, 1-7) at the 11-minute, 9-second mark into a 70-62 lead for the Eagles (10-10, 4-4) with 6:30 to play.

Penoncello started it with back-to-back three-point plays, both on the fast break on feeds from Stuckey.

Stuckey then hit a bank shot, two free throws and a 3-pointer from the top of the key.

“I’m starting to get back in my rhythm,” Stuckey said. “I’ve had some injuries (back and knee) and I need to get back in rhythm to help my team get some victories. Everything is fine now. Things are going good right now.”

Stuckey added an assist to Paul Butorac and four points in a 10-3 burst that pushed the lead to 12 with just less than 3 minutes left.

“I thought UNC did a great job of slowing the pace early on,” Burns said. “One of the things we were trying to get our team to do was to rebound and push the ball up court more. Once we did that I think it really helped, especially Rodney.”

EWU had 16 fast-break points, all in the second half.

“I think the difference was our defense in the last couple of minutes (and) we were able to get on the break,” said Butorac, who finished with 17 points and nine rebounds. “Rodney was on the fast break wheelin’ and dealin’ and when he’s doing that we’re hard to stop.”

Stuckey had 18 of his 31 points and all of his five steals and four assists in the second half.

“It’s just us,” Stuckey said. “The season hasn’t been as good as we wanted it to be. We got together as a team and said we have to play together, we have to play for us. The energy was there and we came out and got the victory. We took a step forward today and hopefully we keep taking steps.”

It was a shaky start to the second half as 6-foot-9 Kirk Archibeque scored 14 of his 21 points in the first 9 minutes for the Bears, turning a 36-32 halftime deficit into a four-point lead.

The lead could have been bigger if Penoncello hadn’t hit a couple of big 3-pointers.

“He’s a good shooter and he’s a clutch shooter,” Burns said. “He worked on slowing things down the last couple days and tonight those shots were huge. We were down for a while and if he didn’t make those shots it could have been a tough deal for us.”

Penoncello’s third 3 gave Eastern a 57-55 lead but Sean Taibi, who scored 21 off the bench for UNC, and Archibeque countered to make it 59-57. But from there, Archibeque didn’t score again until his free throw closed the game.

“We tried to stay on top of Archibeque and in front of him,” Burns said. “Early in the second half we were fronting Archibeque and they were just flipping the ball over for layups because they put Taibi on the opposite guys and our guys were getting stuck in between both players. We needed to stay on top of Archibeque, put pressure on the ball, and help out on the weak side. We were able to do that the last 10 minutes.”

A big difference for the Eagles was at the foul line, where they hit 27 of 36 – to 6 of 13 for the Bears. That’s quite a turnaround from the 9-of-22 performance in a losing effort Thursday.

EWU 91, N.Colorado 79

N. Colorado (3-17) – Kaba 0-2 0-1 0, Archibeque 10-13 1-3 21, Figures 0-3 0-0 0, Moore 2-3 0-1 4, Panagiotakopoulos 2-9 0-0 4, Taibi 8-17 1-1 21, Lowe 0-1 2-4 2, Kline 0-0 2-2 2, Anderson 2-4 0-0 4, Birden 6-10 0-0 15, Mason 2-4 0-1 6. Totals 32-66 6-13 79.

Eastern Washington (10-10) – Williams 1-3 2-2 4, Butorac 6-7 5-8 17, Hinton 1-3 0-0 2, Stuckey 10-19 9-12 31, Taylor 1-3 2-2 4, Krayem 2-6 4-6 9, Penoncello 5-8 4-4 17, Humphrey 0-1 0-0 0, Risper 2-3 1-2 5, Moore 1-3 0-0 2. Totals 29-56 27-36 91. Halftime–Eastern Washington 36-32. 3-Point Goals–N. Colorado 9-22 (Taibi 4-10, Birden 3-3, Mason 2-2, Figures 0-1, Anderson 0-1, Moore 0-1, Panagiotakopoulos 0-4), E. Washington 6-21 (Penoncello 3-6, Stuckey 2-6, Krayem 1-4, Butorac 0-1, Taylor 0-1, Hinton 0-1, Williams 0-1, Humphrey 0-1). Fouled Out–None. Rebounds–N. Colorado 35 (Archibeque 8), E. Washington 35 (Butorac 9). Assists–N. Colorado 20 (Panagiotakopoulos 5), E. Washington 19 (Hinton 5). Total Fouls–N. Colorado 26, E. Washington 16. A–3,327.