Eagles have to wing it

Despite posting important home wins over Weber State and Idaho State last week, Eastern Washington University’s men’s basketball team still has little control over its postseason destiny.

The Eagles, 11-17 overall and alone in seventh place in the Big Sky Conference standings with a 6-8 record, can enhance their chances of earning one of the six berths in the conference tournament tonight by beating Northern Colorado in their next-to-last regular-season game in Greeley, Colo.

But even with a victory over the Bears (11-15, 4-9) and a less-likely road win over conference-leading Portland State (18-8, 11-2) in its regular-season finale on Mar. 4, Eastern still faces the possibility of equaling last year’s 8-8 conference record and again not making the BSC tournament.

Heading into tonight’s game at Northern Colorado, a team they beat 91-85 in overtime in Cheney, the Eagles have played one more conference game than any of the four teams they can still tie or overtake for sixth place in the Big Sky standings. They sit a half game behind sixth-place Montana (6-7), 1 1/2 games behind Montana State (7-6) and Idaho State (7-6), which are tied for fourth, and 21/2 games behind third-place Weber State (8-5).

Presuming Portland State loses for a second time to Eastern on March 4 but wins at least one of its other two remaining games to capture the outright regular-season BSC title, EWU could still tie for sixth place with either ISU or Weber and earn a tournament berth by virtue of the advantage it holds over those two teams in the league’s tiebreaking formula.

But that formula – which first considers head-to-head outcomes before dropping down to records against the league champion – does not favor EWU against either Montana or Montana State, both of which swept the Eagles during the regular season.

Eastern could, however, win both of its remaining games and slip past Montana, Idaho State and Montana State, finish alone in fourth place and not have to deal with any tiebreaking scenarios – provided Montana beats ISU on Sunday and then loses out, and both ISU and Montana State fail to win again during the regular season, putting all three of those teams at 7-9.

All of which means nothing, at this point, to first-year EWU coach Kirk Earlywine, who has his Eagles focused solely on tonight’s game against Northern Colorado, which tips off at 6:05 in Butler-Hancock Sports Pavilion.

“We can’t look at it as two games, worrying about this team and that team, this seed and that seed,” Earlywine said. “The only thing we can control is how we play (tonight) at Northern Colorado, and that’s what we’re going to work on.”