Finally, a sweet November
Eastern Washington seniors Paul Terrell and Michael Roos stood on the sidelines at Woodward Field last Saturday night marveling at the playoff-like atmosphere.
The Eastern Washington football team was putting the finishing touches on a 38-21 win over Cal Poly and the bookend offensive tackles were savoring their first meaningful November game.
“It’s kind of a new feeling,” Terrell said. “It’s something we all hoped for every single year. We never imagined it would take this long to have something to play for, something to look forward to. I don’t think it’s really sunk in yet. We haven’t won anything yet.”
All the win over the 11th-ranked Mustangs did was move Eastern up to No. 16 in the Top 25 and make this weekend’s game even more important.
The Eagles (7-3, 5-1 in the Big Sky Conference) go to Bozeman to play No. 23 Montana State (6-3, 4-1) for a chance to earn a share of the league title and a probable berth in the I-AA playoffs that begin Thanksgiving weekend.
“I didn’t think it would take this long,” Roos said. “It’s a different feeling, it’s a nice feeling knowing we’re not done. You don’t have that feeling (at practice) that after the next game we’re done. You don’t think about the end of the season yet.”
Eastern hasn’t played a November game with championship or playoff implications since 1997, when the Eagles went 10-1 during the regular season to win their first outright Big Sky title and make the playoffs for the second time. They won two games before losing in the semifinals.
“I’m excited. It’s been a long time coming,” defensive tackle and captain Brandon Myers said. “We seniors, and a lot of guys, worked hard and to have one more game to extend the season, that’s what we’ve been looking for. A lot of things have been going our way for the past year. As a senior to be in this position, it feels real, real good.”
The dozen seniors, most of whom entered school in 2000 or 2001, never expected it would be their senior year before they would savor the cold practices of November, but since that magical 1997 run, the Eagles developed the aggravating habit of dropping key games early.
“It’s my fourth year and it’s like, ‘Wow, I played these kind of games in high school,’ ” tight end Chris Cwik, a Mead graduate, said. “It brings back the good feeling of what it’s like to play football late in the fall, going down to hostile territory. That’s what football is all about, playing football in November.”
Before this senior class started to arrive, the 1998 Eagles opened the season with three straight losses, including back-to-back conference games by three points each. In 1999, the last year before head coach Mike Kramer went to Montana State, a late November loss to Montana, the Eagles’ fourth loss, effectively ended playoff hopes.
Wulff’s first season as head coach was in 2000 and Eastern lost back-to-back league games in October by a total of eight points. The next year it was back-to-back losses to the Montana schools – by three at Montana in double overtime, and 10 to MSU when the Eagles returned home – that dashed hopes by Oct. 6.
In 2002, October started with a seven-point loss to Idaho State at home and a three-pointer at Portland State. Last year it was Weber State that came in and won by a dozen followed by ISU escaping in a double-overtime shootout.
This team has been different, even after opening the season with back-to-back road losses. They rebounded to pummel Central Washington, Idaho State and Portland State before Northern Arizona, a playoff team a year ago, came to town. The No. 16 Lumberjacks left on the bad end of a 45-14 romp.
Even with a heartbreaking, 31-28 loss to No. 5 Montana the next week before the largest crowd at Woodward, the players didn’t lose focus. The Eagles never looked past lowly Weber State or Sacramento State with two more ranked teams on the horizon, spanking the pair by a combined 96-17 score.
Next it was Cal Poly in a non-conference game.
Now it’s Kramer’s Bobcats providing the last hurdle.
“The season has gone fast for everybody,” said EWU head coach Paul Wulff, the offensive line coach in 1997. “Each week is a new challenge to look forward to. The fact that in our last game we have a chance to win a championship, that’s what we’ve spent the last few years working for and we’re here. All along our goal was to get to November with a chance to win a championship.”
“It’s very much more than a (last) game, it means a lot to a lot of the seniors,” defensive back Josh Artis said in the darkness after a cold practice. “We’ve worked so hard for the last four or five years. To know we have a chance to go to the postseason is just awesome. … We’re having fun. To know we have one more game, win this game and we have a chance to go for the national championship, you can’t help but have fun.”
The other seniors are defensive end Tom Finnerty from Mead, injured linebacker Doug Vincent, cornerback Ryan Phillips, safeties Nate McFarnlane from Central Valley and Javid Shoemaker, and running backs Darius Washington and Reggie Witherspoon.
Linebacker-safety Muhammad Shamsid-Deen is listed as a senior but chose to not participate in the Senior Day ceremony last week. He plans to graduate before the end of the summer so he can get the year back he missed by entering school as an academic non-qualifier. That is the route Myers and Artis took.