Eastern Washington looks to keep slim playoff hopes alive against Portland State

Eastern Washington’s football team returns home this weekend to face a Portland State Vikings team that looks a lot like the Eagles .

Both teams are 2-5 overall and 1-3 in Big Sky play having played front-loaded schedules with multiple FBS opponents and matchups with teams in the conference’s upper echelon. Both are running offenses under first-year starting quarterbacks that haven’t quite found consistency, ranked in the middle of the Big Sky in scoring.

And both teams need a win to keep their hopes of a winning season alive when they kick off at 1 p.m. Saturday at Roos Field in Cheney.

“They’re always a potent, dangerous team, whether they’re home or away,” EWU coach Aaron Best said Tuesday during media availability. “Coach (Bruce) Barnum will have them ready to go.”

Barnum, who played linebacker at EWU and whose first coaching job came at Central Valley High School in 1986, is in his eighth year coaching the Vikings, who last beat the Eagles in 2015. That was Barnum’s first year at PSU.

Since Best took over as Eastern’s head coach, he has a 4-0 record against Portland State. All four of those games have been high-scoring : 59-33, 74-23, 53-46 and 42-28.

That most recent two-touchdown victory came at the end of last season in Hillsboro, Oregon, a game in which Portland State held a 21-14 lead in the third quarter before Eastern pulled away .

These are, of course, different teams than last year’s squads. Each has a new starting quarterback, for example, with senior Gunner Talkington leading the Eagles and sophomore Dante Chachere leading the Vikings.

But schematically, the two programs have been consistent over the past few seasons, Best said.

“Their offensive line is salty. They’re always coached well. They’re always kind of mean and angry,” Best said. “Their defense has always kind of been a Cover-1 outfit, a man (coverage) outfit. So it doesn’t really matter if you rewind five years back; it was just different guys kind of doing the same things.”

The Vikings are eager to wrest back control in the rivalry, dubbed familiarly as “The Dam Cup” based on the frequent structures along the region’s Columbia River.

“A rivalry weekend is very important to us,” senior PSU receiver Beau Kelly said on Tuesday. “We want to come back with that Cup.

“I haven’t seen that Cup since I’ve been here at PSU and it means a lot to me personally and to us as a team to go get that.”

Containing Kelly is a priority for the Eastern defense, Best said. Last year in Hillsboro, Kelly had seven catches for 126 yards and a touchdown.

He is coming off a similar performance last week (six catches, 119 yards and a score) in Portland State’s 56-21 loss at Idaho and ranks sixth in the Big Sky with 482 receiving yards.

“(Portland State has) probably the best group of wide receivers that we will have faced outside of Oregon and Florida,” Best said. “Beau Kelly’s one of the better guys in the league. He plays slot, and they get him the ball in different ways. He can do it all.”

Add to that the versatility of Chachere, who leads the Vikings with 324 rushing yards, and again the ability of Eastern’s defense to stop a quarterback who can run and throw will be tested.

Yet the Eagles are riding a wave after getting their first conference win – and first road win – of the season, 17-10 at Cal Poly on Saturday, and by winning their last four games they, like the Vikings, can finish with a winning record at 6-5.

“We’re feeling good,” EWU junior receiver Anthony Stell Jr. said. “It’s always good to win a game, especially with the type of schedule we’ve had. It’s been a battle every week.”

That’s also been the case for the Vikings, who opened the season with losses at San Jose State (21-17) and at Washington (52-6).

They won two of their next three games – including a 35-27 win over Northern Arizona and a 48-6 victory over Division II Lincoln (California) – but have also lost to Weber State, Montana and Idaho, each of which is ranked in the FCS Stats Perform Top 25.

There is perhaps no other program with which Eastern is more familiar, at least historically. With the exception of the spring 2021 season, the two have played every year since 1990.

Every matchup since 2011 has been played in mid- or late November, but when the Big Sky revamped its schedules for 2022, 2023 and 2024, this game and the one next year in Oregon are slated for late October.

They are not scheduled to play in 2024.

Still, one aspect of this matchup may feel a bit like late November: the conditions.

“(We are) excited to be back home and to get some Northwest weather: 50 degrees, a little sprinkle,” Best said. “It should bode well for a Portland State (versus) Eastern game.”