Winning with grit: The 2002-03 Eastern Washington basketball team earned school’s first D-I postseason berth with a toughness that matched its coach

Even before the chemistry needed to win sports championships, there has to be buy-in. And a lot of grit and toughness. And maybe even a chip on the shoulder.

Ray Giacoletti was a master of corralling all of that at Eastern Washington University 20 years ago.

In his four seasons at the helm of the EWU men’s basketball program, he guided the Eagles to heights unseen in the school’s history as a member of NCAA Division I. A National Invitation Tournament postseason berth was their first in school history at that level, and that catapulted the school to the first of what has become three NCAA Tournament appearances.

“That was a fun four years and we had a lot of tough players and coaches in our program,” said Giacoletti, who is now retired and living in Florida after 34 years as a collegiate coach. “I didn’t realize it at the time going through it. But it was a pretty special time in my career, there is no doubt about it.”

Much like this year’s crop of Eagles under head coach David Riley, Giacoletti’s most successful teams were a conglomeration of the right pieces of the puzzle joining a nucleus of talent already within the program. The breakthroughs came in the 2002-03 season – 20 years ago. And if there was a team that exemplified the grind to get to the top, this was it.

“We had a lot of good players – and tough kids – and that certainly makes life easier,” said Giacoletti. “We had tough players all four years, but those last two years they were also tough-minded guys. They were hard-nosed and really bought into doing the little things to be successful. It was fun to be a part of those teams.”

Early -season road wins at San Diego State, Washington and Boise State set the stage for a 2003 conference season in which EWU tried to erase the memories of back-to-back championship game losses in the Big Sky Tournament in Giacoletti’s first two seasons at the helm.

Eastern started the league season 5-0 but dropped all four regular-season meetings against Idaho State and Weber State. Three of those losses were by a combined seven points.

After beating Idaho State in the Big Sky semifinals, the Eagles dropped a heartbreaker, 60-57 to Weber State and conference player of the year Jermaine Boyette.

“That was tough,” recalls Marc Axton, a standout player in the mid-2000s and now an SWX analyst on EWU television broadcasts. “We had a great team but just couldn’t get by Weber.”

The NIT came calling next, and a 78-71 loss at Wyoming ended the season. That game was delayed a day because of a huge snowstorm in northern Colorado and southern Wyoming, where Eastern players and staff spent more time pushing their team bus out of the snow than time spent on the court.

Eastern finished 18-13, equaling the most wins in EWU’s D-I history (16 years at the time). It wasn’t until the 2014-15 season that the Eagles would win more, a 26-victory campaign in which EWU made its second NCAA Tournament appearance.

But there always has to be a first for everything and the Eagles of 2002-03 helped set that stage.

Giacoletti was once an assistant at Washington, and it was there that he became fast friends with Mark Few and Dan Monson (then assistants at Gonzaga under Dan Fitzgerald). A Midwest transplant, Giacoletti learned all about West Coast basketball in his four years with the Huskies, and that paid dividends when he became EWU’s head coach for the 2000-01 season.

When he arrived at EWU from North Dakota State, he inherited several talented seniors of former head coach Steve Aggers.

But the most important piece of the puzzle nearly left Cheney just as Giacoletti was arriving. A standout at Franklin High School, Alvin Snow had signed with Aggers, but the new coach had to re-recruit him to come to Cheney.

“The first thing I did when I got the job was to drive over there and visit with Alvin, his mother and (Franklin head coach) Jason Kerr,” Giacoletti said. “Jason was the one who got him to keep his commitment. How important that was cannot be understated – if Alvin didn’t come here it would have changed history.”

Snow eventually became EWU’s first D-I All-American was the school’s first Big Sky Conference MVP. Three times he earned first team All-Big Sky honors and was the league’s inaugural Defensive Player of the Year as a sophomore.

“I’ve been proud of a lot of people, but I don’t know if I’ve been more proud of Alvin’s development over the course of his lifetime,” he said. “He was the most important piece to that four-year period, no doubt.”

Snow had 1,396 points, 212 steals and 318 assists in 118 games as an Eagle, leading the school to 69 victories overall and 41 in league play.

A second piece of the puzzle was secured the following year, when Eastern signed Axton out of Foss High School in Tacoma. He led Foss to the State 4A title in 2000 and to a fourth-place finish as a senior.

But Giacoletti admits they didn’t know of the immense talent Axton possessed until he arrived on campus. Axton soon became a fixture as a power forward with a great ability to shoot from the outside.

“I remember (former EWU assistant) Mike Burns and I leaving his house after a visit, and we knew he was going to be a great player in our program,” he said. “He was a great human being and worked hard, and came from a great family – but at the same time we didn’t really know what position he would play. Having him was huge and an even bigger piece to our team than we ever imagined.”

Axton, like Snow, would earn first -team All-Big Sky honors on three occasions, and finish his career with 1,319 points. He set four school records, including career marks for games played (119), 3-pointers made (184) and 3-pointers attempted (499), and twice tied the single-game record of seven 3s made.

Chris Hester arrived via the junior college route and led the Eagles in scoring (14.0 points per game) as a senior in 2002-03. Hester, Snow and Axton were first -team All-Big Sky performers that season.

Gritty point guard Brendon Merritt and forward Keith Browne joined EWU for the 2002-03 season, and were joined by Danny Pariseau out of Spokane’s Shadle Park High School. Pariseau played significant minutes as a freshman in 2002-03. Another junior college transfer, T.J. Williams, was the team’s top rebounder and led the team in field-goal percentage.

“We had a well-balanced team with some great players,” said Axton. “It was great to be rewarded that year with the berth into the NIT, and I still have the watch they handed out.”

Toughness was the key, Giacoletti says, and so was being a small fish in a big pond among the likes of Gonzaga, Washington and Washington State.

“You try to recruit to that, but it’s hard to get all the intangibles,” he says of the toughness factor. “The Washington kids had a chip on their shoulder, and we tried to build that chip up a little more – it was us against the world. We always used Gonzaga as an example that if you want respect you have to go out and beat people and earn it. Our players took it to heart, and our staff had a work ethic and toughness. Those players were perfect for us.”

The victory over the Huskies was particularly pleasing for Snow. He poured in 24 points, then gave a curtain call after the game, sitting in the stands for upwards of an hour with family and friends.

“It was obviously a big win for everybody from Oregon and Washington, particularly for Alvin,” said Giacoletti. “It was a special game and really fun for those kids.

“Winning at a Pac-12 school – especially within the state – is awfully cool.”

The Eagles weren’t quite as fortunate versus Gonzaga just before Christmas, and suffered a 67-64 loss to the Bulldogs in front of a sellout crowd of 11,000 at the Spokane Arena. Eastern led all but the last 30 seconds when Gonzaga hit a 3-point shot with 30 seconds left.

“We went under the ball screen against Blake Stepp and he hits the winning 3,” recalls Giacoletti, whose team a year before had led GU by 16 at halftime but still lost. “There aren’t too many things I can remember in 34 years, but I can remember that. At a time out we said whatever we do – whatever we do – do not go under the screen, he will shoot it. Sure enough. It’s etched in my mind.”

Much like the current EWU team, the 2002-03 Eagles helped launch a winning streak with road wins at Montana and Montana State, although Giacoletti couldn’t remember the sweep.

He was, however, quick to text Riley after this year’s Eagles’ sweep.

“That’s pretty special,” Giacoletti says. “I can remember winning in Missoula, but I can’t remember winning in Bozeman. Holy cow.”

Weber State finished the league season unbeaten at 16-0 – the last Big Sky school to accomplish that feat – and earned the right to host the conference tournament. In the final, the Eagles had no answer for Boyette, who poured in 29 points and sent EWU to its third straight championship game loss.

EWU learned of its unlikely NIT at-large berth the following day – no small feat considering it was Eastern’s first postseason appearance in a national tournament in 56 years. The Eagles faced Wyoming in Laramie.

“We talked a number of different times that day, and the first time Scott (Barnes, former EWU athletic director) called,” Giacoletti recalled. “He said, ‘This has a chance.’ ”

Eastern lost that game 78-71 in what turned out to be an eventful trip (see sidebar). But it set the stage for the school’s first trip to the Big Dance the following season.

“It’s all a building process,” Giacoletti said. “You may not know it when you are going through it, but all the adversity we faced on that entire trip certainly helped us the next year – particularly in the first half against Oklahoma State in the (2004) NCAA Tournament.”