Portland St. builds 20-point halftime lead, beats EWU 107-91

PORTLAND – Cameron Forte scored 32 points and Portland State snapped Eastern Washington’s seven-game win streak with a 107-91 victory on Saturday night.

Forte was 14 of 20 from the field, grabbed a game-high nine rebounds, and scored 12 points in the first half as the Vikings built a 20-point halftime lead and cruised from there. Calaen Robinson had 18 points and Isaiah Pineiro chipped in 15 points for Portland State (9-16, 5-9 Big Sky Conference), which shot 65 percent overall and snapped a four-game skid.

Austin McBroom scored 36 points and Venky Jois added 20 points to lead Eastern Washington (16-11, 10-5).

Cody Benzel made a 3-pointer to pull the Eagles to 87-77 with 7:19 remaining, but they did not get closer.

“We’ll take a deep breath. We’ve won seven of our last eight and 10 of our last 13,” Eastern coach Jim Hayford said. “We have a good team and we’re a better offensive team. This loss gets our attention and we’ll just push through.”

Eastern Washington beat the Vikings 112-83 on Jan. 28 to start its seven-game win streak.

“You want sweeps and we got a split,” Hayford said. “The only team that swept this whole trip this year has been Weber State. We’ll wake up in the morning and say, ‘okay, fair enough.’ I’m just disappointed we didn’t have more fight in us from the opening bell.”