Eagles’ 2003-04 tourney team offers advice to this year’s edition

Gregg Smith has some advice for the Eastern Washington basketball players at the NCAA tournament: savor the moment.

That’s what Smith did 11 years ago, when the Eagles first went dancing.

“They just need soak it up,” said Smith, now a teacher at Cheney High School. “It’s just like it was for us: a dream come true.

“Don’t try to hide from the experience – if you take in the experience, it will calm you.”

That approach worked for Smith, who saved his best game for last. The Eagles lost to Oklahoma State, 75-56, but the country music-loving, mullet-sporting 6-foot-10 center hit 8 of 10 shots for a team-high 16 points.

The 2003-04 Eastern team was a trailblazing crew, facing perhaps more obstacles than the current Eagles, who play Georgetown in a second-round NCAA game Thursday night in Portland.

There was even less tradition to fall back on, unless you count the “curse.” It began in Reese Court’s inaugural year in 1976 when EWU won the first game on the road of a best-of-three playoff against Central Washington for a NAIA national tournament spot. But the Eagles lost the next two games at home.

In 2000, with a chance to win the regular-season Big Sky title and host the league tournament, Eastern allowed Montana to go on a 17-0 second-half run and fell to the Grizzlies, 77-75.

In 2003-04, the Eagles were 3-9 at one point, but did so against the fifth-toughest schedule in the country.

Said coach Ray Giacoletti, “I kind of knew that we had a veteran group and that this was going to be our year, so I scheduled up a little harder than perhaps I should have.”

At one point, “some people were starting to panic a little bit, but we had a consensus that we’re good – we’re going to be fine,” said Smith, who added that Giacoletti was a steadying influence early in the season.

That early schedule “toughened us up,” Smith said.

Few were tougher than guard Brendon Merritt, who endured more than 20 surgeries in his career and was a finalist for the Jimmy V Foundation Comeback Award. He played part of the season with a heavy bandage to protect a broken hand, and also had hip and shoulder injuries that year.

Merritt, too, rose to the occasion, in the Big Sky Conference title game at Reese Court. Merritt scored 22 points on 7-of-11 shooting, including all four of his 3-point attempts to lead the Eagles to a historic 71-59 win over Northern Arizona.

After averaging 7.8 points during the season, Merritt scored 43 points in three postseason games.

Said Smith, “I still remember, in the championship, how Brendon took over and carried us.”

One key to success, said forward Marc Axton, was to take it one game at a time.

Axton, who recently moved back to Spokane from Arizona, has caught a few games this year, including the Eagles’ Big Sky quarterfinal win last week over Idaho.

“I think the right way is to treat each game like the last,” said Axton, who was a first-team All-Big Sky selection.

The biggest similarity to this year’s team: a star. This year’s team has national scoring leader Tyler Harvey. The 2003-04 edition had guard Alvin Snow, the only honorable mention Division I All-American in school history.

As a freshman, Snow didn’t return to the locker room with his teammates after losing to Cal State Northridge in the Big Sky title game. Instead, he stayed on the court amid the mass of students who were celebrating that school’s first NCAA tourney berth.

At the time, Snow said he stayed because he wanted to know how it felt – and he found out first hand on March 10, 2004, as he was carried on the shoulders of fellow EWU students after the game.

“I definitely think that making the tournament, and being the first team from Eastern to do that, was big,” Axton said.

They’ll be watching Thursday night.

“I couldn’t be more excited for them,” Giacoletti said.