Battle-tested Eagles eye tournament

Caution: more basketball drama ahead for Eastern Washington fans. That may be a good thing, as the Eastern Washington men’s and women basketball teams are definitely feeling tournament-tested even before the postseason begins. Together, they’ll descend on Missoula this week for the Big Sky Conference tournaments, confident that they’ve been there, done that as the season hits the homestretch. Take Saturday for example, when the Eagle women got a pull-up jumper from Hayley Hodgins to earn a 64-62 overtime win against Weber State. A few hours later, the men rallied from 19 points down to win at Weber State and earn only the third Big Sky regular-season title in school history. “It was a lot of hard work realized,” fourth-year men’s coach Jim Hayford reflected the day after the Eagles claimed a 79-71 overtime win over the defending league champion Wildcats. Next up for the men is a quarterfinal game against Idaho on Thursday on the University of Montana campus. The Eagles (23-8, 14-4 Big Sky) shared the conference title with Montana, but were seeded second because of a tiebreaker and lost the chance to play at home. The next best thing might be playing in nearby Missoula, where the Eagles – playing without national scoring leader Tyler Harvey – took a confidence-boosting, 75-69 win, their first in Dahlberg Arena in 11 years. That 2004 victory came in the season of Eastern’s only NCAA appearance. This year’s team has a solid chance of reaching the tournament: The nagging injuries are a thing of the past, as forward Venky Jois has posted double-doubles in four straight games and Harvey showed signs of breaking out of a shooting slump that coincided with his recovery from a thigh injury. “All of our efficiency centers around those two things,” said Hayford of the inside-out threat of Harvey and Jois. The Eagles will practice this morning and again on Tuesday evening before driving the 215 miles to Missoula. The Eagles will hold a shootaround the next day at Dahlberg Arena. Hayford said he’s building on the positives of the regular-season title, but added that “the biggest thing is not to look at anything other than Idaho.” That makes sense; the seventh-seeded Vandals are only 13-16, but lost to the Eagles by three in Moscow and had the Eagles on the ropes at Reese Court before falling in overtime. “Both games were very even, and we needed a miracle comeback to beat them the second time,” Hayford said. The Eagle women have had their share of ups and downs this year: the heartbreaker to Gonzaga, the confidence-building win over the Grizzlies in Cheney, a lost weekend in Montana and finally a pair of dramatic home wins last weekend. The last one, over Weber State, was especially gratifying as it came on Senior Day. It also clinched the fourth seed and improved the Eagles’ record to 19-10 going into Wednesday’s tournament game against Northern Arizona. “I think this week was especially gratifying in terms of a couple of things,” said coach Wendy Schuller, who is one win shy of the winningest season in her 13 years in Cheney. “You’re feeling more positive about everything you’re doing,” said Schuller, whose club survived a furious Idaho State rally two days earlier before prevailing 62-58. “We were resilient in two different games and had to find a way to win games down the stretch,” Schuller said.