EWU shoots down ISU
Idaho State and Eastern Washington got into another football shootout Saturday night but this time the Eagles defense didn’t get involved.
Eastern opened Big Sky Conference play by scoring on its first four possessions and Darius Washington rushed for 218 yards and four touchdowns to clobber the Bengals 47-22 before 5,581 fans at Woodward Field.
Both teams had impressive opening drives – except for missing the extra points – but after that the Eagles defense took over.
By the end, Eastern (2-2) had piled up 612 yards, seventh-most in school history. The Eagles held Idaho State (1-3) to 433 yards, 338 of that in the air and almost 200 in the fourth quarter because the Bengals were playing catchup before the first quarter was over.
“We decided we were not going to let them come back in the fourth quarter and beat us like they did last year,” senior linebacker Doug Vincent said. “After we worked so hard the whole game to lose it in the last couple of minutes we decided as a team to play four quarters. We executed to our best ability.”
For the most part, the only way the Eagles were stopped was by their own mistakes, including a fumble and an interception in the red zone by quarterback Erik Meyer, who otherwise was brilliant. He completed 18 of 26 passes for 281 yards to 10 different receivers and three touchdowns and consistently scrambled out of trouble. Under his direction the offense converted 13 of 19 third downs and piled up a school record 40 first downs.
The last score was a 62-yard pass to Eric Kimble, who has 25 touchdowns in 25 games, with 6:04 remaining. Richmond Sanders and Matt Maiwald had the other TD receptions.
“Eric Kimble deserves whatever he got tonight as an individual and so did our team,” EWU coach Paul Wulff said.
“We were taking advantage of what they were giving us at that point and we wanted to put a last dagger in there.”
But most impressive was the career night by Washington, who carried the ball 33 times. He scored on a pair of short runs in the first quarter and then 13 seconds into the second quarter ripped off a 65-yard scoring run. His night ended with a 39-yarder early in the fourth quarter that put him seventh on the EWU single-game list.
“They been drilling us to go hard, keep reading your keys and pounding these guys and they’re going to give. Eventually that’s what happened,” Washington said. “I give much credit to my O-line, they did an awesome job getting a good push. Without them I probably wouldn’t have had this night.”
The line included freshmen Rocky Hanni and Matt Alfred at guards and Tom McAndrew as the second tight end.
“It always starts there,” Wulff said. “When those guys are oiled up and playing, we always have a chance to win. It’s always on their shoulders to allow other guys to make things happen. … We had a lot of young kids playing and they did a nice job.
“If we run the ball we have a much better chance of winning games. We did that tonight. They like to throw the ball a lot and we had to try and shorted the game was much as possible.”