Felix Von Hofe scores 25 to lead Eastern men
The power was on Wednesday afternoon at Reese Court.
The source? The hot hand of Eastern Washington’s Felix Von Hofe, who scored a career-high 25 points in the Eagles’ 76-70 win over Seattle.
On a day when Reese doubled as a free warming shelter, Von Hofe and the Eagles stoked the enthusiasm of a surprisingly large crowd of 2,177.
“As this team comes together, who knows how good we’ll be,” coach Jim Hayford said.
The Eagles (2-0) were very good at times in a game that had been scheduled for Tuesday but postponed by hazardous winds. They played the taller Redhawks even on the boards, turned the ball over just seven times and led wire to wire.
On the debit side, they gave up too many open looks, got just nine points from their young bench and let Seattle close a 15-point gap to four in a two-minute span late in the game.
The deciding factor was Von Hofe, who was 7-for-12 from long range and may already have stamped himself as the player who’ll take up most of the 3-point shooting slack left by Tyler Harvey.
“It’s what I expect him to do,” Hayford said. “If the team gives him 12 good looks – he didn’t take a bad shot – he’s going to make them.”
It didn’t hurt that Von Hofe got some help from forward Venky Jois, who scored just 5 points but had five assists. Most of those kickouts found Von Hofe for wide-open shots from beyond the arc.
Said Von Hofe:“There’s definitely a confidence there, but it was confidence that stems from the work Venky does down low – he was selfless,” “Scoring isn’t everything,” Von Hofe said.
Indeed, facing Seattle’s 7-foot-3 post Aaron Menzies and 6-11 power forward Jack Crook, the Eagles managed to stay even on the boards. Besides the nine rebounds from Jois, Eastern got five each from guard Sir Washington and backup forward Jesse Hunt.
Eastern began the game as if it would blow the Redhawks out of the gym. The Eagles made 5 of their first 6 long-range shots and took a 20-7 lead on Austin McBroom’s 3-pointer seven minutes into the game.
But Seattle clawed back, twice closing to within three points before taking a 38-30 halftime lead.
It was more of the same in the second half. Jois’ pass found Von Hofe for a three that pushed the lead to 51-38 with 11:46 left. That was chopped almost in half a minute later on a 3-pointer from Malik Montoya.
Eastern appeared to put the game away with two more big plays by Von Hofe. He faked a shot, drove and lobbed a pass that Jois put in the bucket for a 61-48 advantage with 7:16 left. Two minutes later, he drained the last of his threes to give the Eagles their biggest lead, 68-53 with 5:27 to go.
That lead almost evaporated before Eastern put the game away in the last 71 seconds on a driving layin my Bogdan Bliznyuk and four free throws from McBroom.
Next up for Eastern is the same Seattle team; they’ll play Monday at Key Arena.
“They are 0-3, so I’m sure we are going to get a really, really good punch from them,” Hayford said. “There will be some game-planning because they are going to take away some of the things we did today.”