Nau Steals Play, Game From Eastern Eagles Give Lumberjacks Run For Money Before In-Bounds Play Decides Game

It was tough enough, losing in the final second on a play they’d never seen.

Stranger yet, the team that executed it Friday night hadn’t seen it either.

Northern Arizona’s 67-65 win over Eastern Washington came down to an in-bounds play drawn up in the huddle.

With only one second to work with, NAU coach Ben Howland directed 6-5 Ross Land to lob the inbounds pass high, over the basket, to 6-9 Casey Frank, who would only have time to shoot on the way up.

It worked as diagrammed, or as Howland would point out later, as copied.

“Coach put that in five seconds before we ran out there,” Land said. “I was going to put it right in front of the rim lob it right in the middle of the key knowing that he (Frank) could get up for it.”

Frank said, “I was surprised it worked. We’ve never worked on it before.”

So much for practice makes perfect.

“I saw my friend Rick Majerus (at Utah) use that in the WAC Tournament a couple of years ago,” said Howland, whose Lumberjacks regained the Big Sky Conference lead at 11-3. “Then, you couldn’t catch it with two hands. You had to tip it, with three-tenths of a second or less (remaining). So it’s a play, like so many good plays, that was copied from somebody else.”

It was imitation as art, and it ruined the final Reese court appearance of Eastern’s senior sharpshooter Shannon Taylor, whose game-high 22 points included a 60-foot bomb as the first half expired.

Taylor has two regular-season games to build on another personal record. With six 3-pointers in this one, he broke Justin Payola’s 6-year-old EWU career record for 3’s. Taylor has 165 heading into Eastern’s final two games.

The Eagles, who play at Montana State on Thursday and at Montana on Saturday, are a game up on the Grizzlies for the sixth and final seed in the conference tournament. The Eagles haven’t won in Missoula or Bozeman since 1990.

“We’ll just have to turn into road warriors,” Eastern coach Steve Aggers said.

The game-winning score blunted two great plays down the stretch by EWU’s Deon Williams. The first was a strip of the ball and a court-length drive for a layin that put EWU up for the last time, 63-62, with 1:32 to go.

The second came with Williams taking an in-bounds pass and driving hard for the layup that tied it at 65 with 10 seconds left.

Strong defensively most of the night, the Eagles were all over the Lumberjacks in the final seconds, forcing 5-7 Rod Hutchings to vainly try to fire one up over EWU’s 6-9 Chris White. The ball bounced out along the baseline with 1 second left.

The crucial second, as it turned out.

Even good games - and this was a good one - have their warts, and Eastern sprouted a big one inside the final minute.

White picked up a loose ball with 1:10 to go, with Eastern up a point. The Eagles ran some clock, content to keep the ball on the perimeter, when Williams was whistled for a 5-second violation for failing to attack the basket with 46 seconds remaining.

That’s when Land, the Lumberjacks’ leading scorer, made his first and only successful shot, a 3-pointer at 0:33 that put NAU in front 65-63.

Williams came back to tie it and the rest was left to Howland’s improvisation and Frank’s touch.

“I was surprised that I got that good of a look,” Frank said. “But when a team’s not prepared for something, it’s tougher to guard. Nobody’s ever seen us run anything like that before.

“Coach says we’re a smart team. I guess we proved it by picking that one up tonight.”

Frank praised Taylor as a “helluva player who has one of the quickest releases in the conference.”

Playing before his parents, Sam and Martha Taylor, who were in from Fresno, Calif., for ceremonies honoring their son in his last home game, Taylor hit 6 of 14 3-point shots and had 6 rebounds in a game-high 38 minutes.

Although Williams, with 11, was the only other double-digit scorer for the Eagles, eight Eags scored and most had good defensive games against the No.1-shooting team in the country.

Will Levy for one. Chris Johnson, the freshman center who made NAU’s 7-foot junior work for his 15 points, for another.

Aggers said the Eagles were prepared for some kind of lob on the final play.

“They set a great screen and we just didn’t defend it like we talked about it in the huddle,” said Aggers, whose team is 6-8 in the conference, 9-15 overall. “When you’re a first-place team that has won back-to-back conference championships, you make those kinds of plays.

“We did a great job on Ross Land the whole game, other than his big shot. It was an outstanding game. They’re leading the country in field-goal shooting. I thought we played pretty good perimeter D.

“They made two plays in the last 33 seconds - Land’s 3, and the in-bounder - that made the difference.”

N. Arizona 67, Eastern Washington 65

Northern Arizona (11-3, 19-6) - Land 1-6 0-0 3, Hix 1-3 0-0 2, Frank 3-7 3-3 9, McNair 4-11 2-2 13, Akina 4-8 0-0 10, Gebhardt 0-0 0-0 0, McGrath 0-0 0-0 0, Hutchings 5-7 3-4 13, Wolthers 1-1 0-0 2, McClintock 7-8 1-3 15. Totals 26-51 6-8 67.

Eastern Washington (6-8, 9-15) - Levy 2-6 4-4 8, Williams 5-11 1-2 11, McGee 0-2 0-0 0, Hansen 3-6 0-0 6, Walker 1-2 0-0 3, Taylor 8-18 0-3 22, Fitzgerald 2-4 0-0 6, White 1-3 0-0 2, Johnson 3-5 1-1 7. Totals 25-59 6-10 65.

Halftime - Northern Arizona 32, Eastern Washington 32. 3-point goals - Northern Arizona 9-19 (Hutchings 3-4, McNair 3-5, Akina 2-6, Land 1-4), Eastern Washington 9-25 (Taylor 6-14, Fitzgerald 2-3, Walker 1-2, Williams 0-3, Hansen 0-3). Fouled out - None. Rebounds - Northern Arizona 30 (Land, Frank, McClintock 5), Eastern Washington 31 (Taylor, Johnson 6). Assists - Northern Arizona 20 (McNair 7), Eastern Washington 15 (Williams 5). Total fouls - Northern Arizona 10, Eastern Washington 14. Technicals - None. A - 2,843.