Eastern Washington crashes offensive glass, rolls visiting Northern Arizona 85-70
For all the excellent basketball the Eastern Washington men’s team has played this season, one line item stood as an outlier: rebounding.
Eastern Washington entered Saturday’s game against Northern Arizona ranked fifth in total rebounds and seventh in offensive boards among the Big Sky Conference’s 10 teams, a statistic bothersome enough for the Eagles to make it a focal point during practice this week.
As the Eagles have throughout David Riley’s three seasons as Eastern’s head coach, the team rose to the challenge, grabbing a season-high 14 offensive rebounds in an 85-70 victory over Northern Arizona at Reese Court in Cheney.
“Mindset,” Riley said as the reason for such improvement. “That’s been our big thing this week.
“We’re the 14th-biggest team in the country. For us to be middle of the pack in rebounding in the Big Sky is not what we’re about.”
Redshirt freshman LeJuan Watts grabbed eight rebounds , three of them offensive, and senior guard Ellis Magnuson had seven rebounds with two on the offensive end to lead the Eagles’ effort.
The Eagles’ 14 offensive rebounds were as many as the Lumberjacks grabbed on defense.
“If we get 50% of the offensive rebounds available, that’s a really, really good number,” Riley said.
It helped the Eagles win for the ninth time in a row, moving them to 7-0 in the Big Sky and 13-7 overall. They’ve lost just once since the start of December.
They again got offensive production throughout the lineup, with junior Ethan Price scoring a team-high 20 points on 6-of-10 shooting from the field. He was the Eagles’ best free-throw shooter (6 for 6) on an afternoon when the Eagles weren’t great by percentage – 70%, down from their season average of 74.7% – but were fine by volume: 21 made free throws set a season high.
Northern Arizona dealt with foul trouble much of the game, as Spokane native Liam Lloyd was limited by three fouls in the first half and finished the game scoreless, just the second time that’s happened to him this season.
The Lumberjacks (10-11, 3-4 Big Sky) shot 42.4% from the field and made just 6 of 27 3-point attempts as the Eagles seemed willing to let the Big Sky’s worst 3-point-shooting team try to beat them from long distance.
Trenton McLaughlin, NAU’s leading scorer, finished 3 for 13 from the field and made just 1 of 8 3-pointers for 10 points. Oakland Fort, who sank the winning shot to eliminate Eastern from last year’s Big Sky Tournament, was 4 of 13 overall and 2 of 11 on 3-pointers. He had 11 points, as well as four turnovers and four steals.
The Eagles shot 50.9% from the floor and got 13 points from Casey Jones, 15 from Cedric Coward, 12 from Jake Kyman and 10 from Dane Erikstrup. Of those four, only Erikstrup (3 for 11) made fewer than half his shots.
Eastern had 34 points in the paint as it exploited its significant size advantage over the Lumberjacks, who started four guards and had just one player taller than 6-foot-6 – Carson Basham, who scored 22 points – in their rotation.
“As a team, we’re pretty good at reading what the defense gives us,” Price said, “which I think is so good about our team. We’re so positionless. Everyone can post up.”
Eastern held a 19-point lead at halftime and never let NAU get closer than nine points in the second half. The Eagles made 10 of 27 3-pointers and outrebounded the Lumberjacks 41-23, their largest rebounding margin against a Division I team this season.
That compensated for Eastern’s 18 turnovers, two shy of its season high and the most it has had in Big Sky play.
On Thursday, Eastern will play at Montana State, the first of three games in a five-day stretch. The Eagles play at Montana on Saturday and at Portland State two days later. They return home Feb. 10 against Idaho.