EWU braces for Sky opener against heralded Vikings
During the seven years he spent as an assistant under Joe Cravens at Weber State (1999-2006), Kirk Earlywine learned not to read too much into early-season records when trying to handicap the Big Sky Conference men’s basketball race.
“They can be really misleading,” said Earlywine, who is in his first season as an NCAA Division I head coach at Eastern Washington University. “Because of the way our league works, teams end up playing the majority of their non-conference games on the road, and usually have to play two or three guarantee (money) games against big-name opponents.
“That skews the non-conference records and makes it difficult to know just how teams stack up until they get into conference play.”
As a result, Earlywine admits to not knowing what to expect from the Portland State team (7-5) that will travel to Reese Court Saturday night at 7:05 to help Eastern (5-8) kick off Big Sky play.
“I know they have some veterans returning, who can really play,” he said of the Vikings, who finished 19-13 overall and 9-7 in conference play last year. “And they have some good non-conference wins already.”
PSU (7-5) is expected to battle Montana and Montana State for this year’s regular-season conference title, while defending co-champions Weber State and Northern Arizona head a long list of teams with an outside chance of sneaking into the title picture.
“Right now it looks like Portland State is pretty much head and shoulders – talent-wise, at least – above everybody else,” said second-year Weber State coach Randy Rahe, who was named the conference’s coach of the year last winter after leading the Wildcats to a 20-12 record and a Big Sky tournament title that gave them an automatic berth in the NCAAs.
“I think you’ve got to put Montana up there, as well, although they’ve hit a tough stretch here recently,” Rahe said. “And just looking around, you have to figure Montana State is much improved over last year and another team that has a good chance of winning it all.”
Rahe said his Wildcats face a major problem in trying to replace last year’s top scorer and league MVP David Patten.
“He was the focal point of our offense and had a way of making everyone around him better,” Rahe said. “We’re still trying to adjust to not having him. We’ve got a few kids coming back from last year, though, so I think we’ll be okay.
“But we’re going to have to have everybody playing well night in and night out to have a chance, because the league is so balanced.”
Rahe expects Northern Colorado to be another vastly improved team and said he has been impressed by what he’s seen of Eastern, a team that was picked by conference coaches and members of the media that cover the Big Sky to finish near the bottom of the conference standings, along with Sacramento State and Idaho State.
Earlywine is the only first-year coach in the conference, but four others – ISU’s Joe O’Brien, MSU’s Brad Huse, Northern Colorado’s Tad Boyle and Rahe – are in their second seasons on the job.