Home fans have seen little of Eastern Washington’s men

By now, Eastern Washington men’s basketball fans should be feeling thoroughly deprived.

The Eagles haven’t played a meaningful home game since mid-November. On Dec. 6, Great Falls appeared at Reese Court with a junior varsity squad, while this week’s game against Morehead State was canceled when the would-be visitors couldn’t get a plane flight from Denver.

The upshot is that Eagles fans will go almost eight weeks without seeing a Division I opponent at Reese Court. Barring snowdrifts on Highway 195, Big Sky Conference rival Idaho will be at Reese Court on Jan. 9.

EWU coach Jim Hayford tried to make light of the situation.

“All month we’ve been the road-weary team, and we wanted somebody else to be the road-weary team for once,” Hayford said.

No such luck. The Eagles will be back on the road on Sunday for their nonconference finale at Denver. Big Sky play begins Dec. 31 at Northern Colorado.

The pause gave Hayford to take stock of his team, which is 5-6 after going 0-3 at Davidson, Pittsburgh and Western Carolina.

“What I don’t like is that we’re 12 games into the season and we’re still a work in progress,” said Hayford, who last year led the Eagles to a 26-9 record and a conference title.

“Every team is a work in progress at Christmas time, but this one more so,” Hayford said.

Health is part of the problem. Transfer Julian Harrell, a 6-foot-5 guard whom Hayford calls “one of the better athletes on the team,” is still recovering from a broken hand, while all-Big Sky forward Venky Jois has been battling bronchitis for almost a month. Backup Jesse Hunt also has been hurt.

Meanwhile, sophomore forward Bogdan Bliznyuk is barely shooting 40 percent from the field and Hayford is still looking for someone to earn big minutes off the bench.

“And we’re not stopping anybody,” said Hayford who watched his last three opponents shoot 53 percent from the field and 47 percent from beyond the arc.

Given all that, a 5-6 record (with wins over San Francisco, Seattle and Pacific) doesn’t look all that bad – provided the short-term problems don’t linger.

So far, most of the shining moments have come from transfer point guard Austin McBroom and small forward Felix Von Hofe. Already a strong distributor, McBroom is shooting 47 percent from the field and 42 percent from 3-point range. Von Hofe’s numbers (.486 FG and .444 from 3) are even better.

“Austin and Felix have surpassed expectations, so if we can get Bogdan and Feliz up to speed, we’ll have four players playing at a high level,” Hayford said.

The next step is to get them to play fewer minutes. All four are averaging at least 31 minutes. It’s no coincidence that Eastern has led at halftime in all but two games.

“We haven’t settled into a rotation. Somebody has to step up,” Hayford said.