Eagles Find Going Gets Crowded At Top

Thirty-two seconds left, Eastern Washington inbounding the basketball with a three-point lead. Coach Steve Aggers hollers for a timeout and when he doesn’t get it right away, goes Doberman.

“Blow the whistle!” he barks at referee Brent Smith, who finally does.

“I did once,” Smith says sheepishly, shaking the pea in his balky flute.

“Got to blow it twice,” counsels Aggers, chilling. “It’s a big crowd.”

A 20-second timeout for irony. We like it.

“Big” is, of course, the most relative of adjectives, especially at Reese Court, where games have been officiated in ultrasound to no ill effect. Research would probably reveal that the adage “two’s company, three’s a crowd” was actually coined there.

Now it can be upgraded.

Two thousand’s comforting, three thousand’s a crowd.

More than that - 3,048, to be exact - turned out for the home finale of a remarkable EWU basketball regular season Friday night. Some came with their faces painted, others with torsos bared - though we’re certain that with TV in the house, it was a cynical obsession not with seeing but with being seen.

No matter. Cynicism had no chance against the emotional embrace the five Eagle seniors wrapped around Hester Addison, whose late son Roderick McClure - killed in an auto accident in December 1996 - was remembered Friday as Eastern’s sixth senior. TV exposure receded into trivial afterthought with each shot Deon Williams, Kevin Lewis and Michael Lewis hit down the stretch of a 93-86 victory over Portland State, EWU’s 16th victory. It’s been eight seasons since the school won more.

Athletically, there have never been higher times at EWU. Big Sky champs in volleyball. A final four team in football.

A basketball team to love, and perhaps even to fear.

“Yeah, maybe,” agreed Aggers. “We’re hot, we’re finding ways to win, we’re winning the close ones. Maybe we’re the team people don’t want to face.”

Some of us can remember when only Aggers’ predecessor felt that way.

It’s one thing for the Eagles simply to be playing in the Big Sky Conference tournament this week. The thought of them being players - the No. 3 seed, the hottest team in the field aside from host Northern Arizona - is almost too much.

Except to perhaps the Eagles themselves. For them, it’s not enough.

“Just getting there is no longer the mission,” said forward Mike Sims. “It was, but not any more. Now is no time to just be satisfied.”

In truth, the Eagles got over that a long time ago.

A look at comparative stats will suggest that the Eagles don’t do any one thing particularly well. Numerically, there are deficiencies in shooting, rebounding, defending the 3.

But beyond the stats, it’s clear the Eags do one thing exceedingly well: will themselves to win. Nine of their games have been decided in the final three minutes, all of them Eastern victories.

They have beaten teams from the Pac-10 and WAC, and they have beaten everyone within their league except NAU. When they lose, they lose huge - but there are few tangible benefits to being the champion of lost causes.

“We have a chance to be one of those teams America falls in love with in March,” said Aggers, “teams that get on a roll and play themselves into the NCAA Tournament. And all we have to do is keep doing what we’ve been doing - maybe do it just a little better.”

This is pretty much the same approach Aggers has taken since he inherited one of America’s most downtrodden basketball programs in 1995. Not long after he arrived, the Eagles bottomed out at 300th in the NCAA’s RPI rankings; the market closed Saturday with them at 159.

Sims remembers the dark days of 300. He is the only player in the program Aggers did not recruit.

“It was hard to get up and put on a jersey to go play when you were 1-12,” he said, “when you knew you could win but you always lost at the end. It was a rough few years.

“One thing coach said when he first got here was that those who stay will be champions. And even though we’re not No. 1 in the league, we’ve accomplished a lot - the best team here in eight years, 11-1 at home. We feel like champions tonight.”

Anything special about being the sole survivor?

“I don’t take it for granted,” Sims said.

That’s a good suggestion for all the revelers, whether they be students, alums or educrats. Eastern’s hard-earned athletic success obscures the fact that coaches and players still do it on a shoestring, and often a frayed one at that.

The trustees affirmed the school’s place in the Division I firmament last fall, but at Eastern it’s always something. The president is gone. There’s a full-of-himself legislator hellbent on retrenching, to the point he’d like to dust off the shingle identifying the place as Cheney Normal.

At Duke, they heckle opposing players. At Eastern, an undergrad in a neckie hoisted a sign Friday night that read “Jim West Sucks.”

Now, you tell me which school prizes academics more highly.

“Students here have been looking for something to rally around,” said Aggers. “Football gave them that and we’ve been able to carry it over. It’s a shame the tournament is in Flagstaff. If it were closer, I think the students might show up. I think you could fill a bus or two.”

Or three. That’s a crowd.

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = John Blanchette The Spokesman-Review