Second-half letdown sends Eagles backward
The baby steps Eastern Washington took on the road toward becoming a better basketball team were wiped out in 150 seconds Thursday night.
Santa Clara parlayed two turnovers, two missed shots and no defensive resistance into 10 quick points to open the second half and anything else that transpired in the Broncos’ 66-57 non-conference victory before 1,125 fans at Reese Court was deemed irrelevant by Eagles coach Kirk Earlywine.
“We’d better find our hearts,” he said. “We’d better find a little bit of competitive spirit. That first 2 1/2 minutes of the second half was some of the most embarrassing basketball that I’ve been a part of in a long time.
“I’ve been told that I’ve been accused of wielding my honesty like a blunt instrument. Maybe that’s true sometimes, but I don’t lie to them and they played uninspired, soft and without any competitive spirit.”
What happened was Mitch Henke hit back-to-back 3-pointers and a layup and 6-foot-10 John Bryant flushed a dunk, expanding a 31-26 halftime lead to 41-26.
The Eagles (2-6) never recovered from that, although Santa Clara (5-1) never put the game away.
“Maybe our guys think it’s some sort of security blanket playing here,” Earlywine said, “but if you don’t play with any kind of heart, any kind of competitive spirit, it doesn’t matter where you play, you’re gonna get your butts beat.”
That showed by Santa Clara’s 54 percent shooting and 33-19 edge in rebounding.
The first half didn’t start much better, but that didn’t bother Earlywine.
With Bryant scoring eight points and the Eagles just 2 of 13 from the field, the Broncos were up 16-6 11 minutes into the game.
Eastern hit its next six shots, including three 3-pointers from Milan Stanojevic, and tied the game at 21 at 3:06 on Brandon Moore’s shot in the lane.
However, Henke hit a 3 to start and end a closing 10-5 run to give Santa Clara the lead.
“I wasn’t discouraged in the first half with our competitiveness, our level of intensity,” Earlywine said. “I thought that we were trying to guard. I thought our effort to the offensive boards was not good. We got the ball where we wanted to a number of times on offense, but they were just tougher.”
Stanojevic, from Serbia by way of Northwest Community College in Powell, Wyo., added two more 3-pointers in the second half to finish with 15 points, the best of his short EWU career.
“That was just hard practice,” he said. “I’ve been shooting all my life. The last couple of games I’m not making them, so now it comes out. The point guards are the ones who make shots for me. When they’re driving, that’s how I get open shots. I had good shots in transition in the first half, not so much in the second half.”
Overall Stanojevic hit 5 of 8 shots, all 3s.
“Milan is starting to shoot a little better,” Earlywine said. “I think he was kind of feeling the weight of the world on his shoulders. I think taking him out of the starting lineup has helped in a little bit. We know he can shoot the ball.”
Another junior college transfer, Matt Brunell, a Cheney native, also had a career high with 12 points. He hit 5 of 8 shots after entering the game as a 22 percent shooter.
Adris DeLeon, EWU’s No. 2 scorer at 10 points a game, had nine points in 15 minutes but did not enter the game until after SCU’s second-half surge.
“That was coach’s decision,” Earlywine said. “I’ll leave it at that.”
Eastern’s leading scorer Kellen Williams had two points in 39 minutes, nine less than his average.
Henke finished with 20 points and Bryant had 14 on 7-of-9 shooting.
It doesn’t get easier for the Eagles, who play at Missouri-Kansas City on Monday and No. 4 Kansas on Wednesday.
“From the Washington game to Virginia Tech to Michigan to Anchorage we took four baby steps forward, but we took a huge, gigantic leap backwards tonight,” Earlywine said. “We’ve got to rectify that and get it back in the right direction.”