Getting it done
With everything on the line, the Eastern Washington Eagles looked like the team they always believed they could be.
With Rodney Stuckey scoring a season-high 34 points and each of his teammates making key contributions along the way, the Eagles knocked off Big Sky Conference leader Weber State 89-74 before 2,187 fans at Reese Court Wednesday night.
“We stepped up and played hard,” EWU sophomore Matt Penoncello said. “It was a big game for us. This season hasn’t gone at all how we expected. We just knew we had to play hard.”
Penoncello and Paul Butorac combined for 15 of their 22 points in the first half to keep in sight the red-hot Wildcats (16-10, 9-4 Big Sky), who dropped into a four-way tie for first in the loss column.
Marcus Hinton scored all eight points in the second half, helping jump-start the offense early.
Kellen Williams grabbed 10 rebounds as the Eagles dominated the boards 41-19.
Michael Taylor scored nine of his 11 points in the second half, including a big 3-pointer when the game was tight and four free throws down the stretch.
With 5 minutes left Omar Krayem swished a deep, shot clock-beating 3-pointer to push the lead to 11 just after Stuckey went to the bench with his fourth foul. That seemed to provide the final boost the Eagles (12-13, 6-7) needed.
“If you look down our lineup tonight, everyone contributed for us,” Eagles coach Mike Burns said, going down the list. “Every kid on our roster made a big play tonight and that’s why we won.”
It appeared early it was going to be more of the same for the Eagles, who have allowed teams in eight of their previous 10 games to shoot and score much better than their season averages.
The Wildcats shot 53.8 percent in the first half, missing just one of their eight 3-point shots. Juan Pablo Silveira was unconscious, hitting all four of his 3-pointers and 7 of 8 shots overall for 20 points.
Weber built an early eight-point lead and maintained that through the 3-minute mark. But the Eagles finished with a 10-2 run to forge a tie at 42.
“It’s kind of been how our season’s gone, people just seem to shoot the ball real well against us,” Penoncello said. “Coach just came into the locker room and said keep doing what you’re doing. We had to tighten up on (Silveira) a little bit. He was just killing us, but (we had to) keep playing hard.”
Eastern scored the first five points of the second half and never trailed, but the Wildcats stayed close for 10 minutes.
After Taylor’s 3-pointer made it 60-54 with 13:40 left, David Patten, who finished with 19, responded with a 3-pointer, making the Wildcats 10 of 11 from behind the arc.
But from then, abysmal free-throw shooting doomed Weber and the Eagles soared.
Weber State, which finished 11 of 17 from 3-point range, was 15 of 32 from the foul line, including 8 of 20 in the second half.
Silveira had just five points in the second half, with Stuckey, who also had seven rebounds, six assists and four steals, handling most of the defense.
“Weber State was running a lot of cross-screens to spring Silveira and give him the open shots,” Burns said. “In the first half we were helping too much and he was hitting his shots, so we said that we couldn’t help so much, we needed to fight through the screen and force tough shots from Silveira.”
The Eagles also quit switching defenses, sticking to man.
“Even though we were getting stuck on some screens they still had to make those shots,” Burns said. “Probably five of those seven (first half 3-pointers) were contested. When they are shooting like that it kind of eliminates zone defense as an option. … They can put five guys on the court that can that 3-pointer so we had to put the zone defense to bed at halftime.”
Meanwhile, the Eagles improved from 48.3 to 63.6 shooting after the break and finished 26 of 32 from the line.
Weber State plays at Portland State tonight. The Vikings (15-10, 6-6), who play at Reese Court on Saturday, are a half-game ahead of EWU in the chase for the final berth in the Big Sky tournament.