Eastern Washington goes on late run to beat Portland State, remain unbeaten in Big Sky

Since the middle of last season, the Portland State Vikings have built a reputation around the Big Sky Conference as a team that can win basketball games with tenacious, frustrating defense.

For a stretch of Thursday night’s game at Reese Court in Cheney, they played it just about to perfection, slapping away passes and snaring offensive rebounds away from Eastern Washington’s players.

But there was only so much the Vikings could do to stop Steele Venters, Angelo Allegri and a cast of Eagles’ scoring options.

Down six points with just less than 8 minutes to go, the Eagles went on a 25-4 run to storm back ahead for a 92-80 victory.

They improved to 9-7 overall and 3-0 in Big Sky play, enough to stand alone atop the conference standings.

“It was like a light switch turned on,” EWU coach David Riley said of the late run, “and we started playing the right way offensively, we started rebounding (and) we started contesting more of their shots.”

Those were three aspects of the game that, for the middle of the game, Eastern stopped executing well. Overall, Portland State forced 20 turnovers, grabbed 15 offensive rebounds, attempted 23 more shots than the Eagles did, outscoring Eastern 36-22 in the paint.

But Eastern rode its hot shooting to an early 20-8 lead and then, after letting the Vikings take control for a while, returned to form in the final eight minutes.

“(Portland State) let us know that they were going to get hot,” junior Tyreese Davis said. “We just stayed composed. That was the biggest thing. We had our run, they had their run. But at the end of the day, we had the last run.”

Venters, a sophomore, finished with 25 points on 8-of-18 shooting. The senior Allegri added 21 – including a 6 for 7 night from 3-point range – and didn’t miss a shot from anywhere on the court until making just 1 of 4 from the free-throw line late in the game.

And then there was Davis, who scored a season-high 15 points, grabbed eight rebounds and had a team-best six assists. He finished 5 of 6 from the field and 4 of 5 from the line. It was Davis’ 3 from the wing that drew the Eagles back within a point, 70-69, early in their scoring run.

Portland State’s Jorell Saterfield – who led his team with 21 points and spearheaded their second-half surge – missed a 3 the next time down, and Cedric Coward drew a foul on the ensuing fast break .

The sophomore made both ends of a 1-and-1 to give Eastern a 71-70 lead, and the Eagles never relinquished it. Coward finished with just four points but grabbed five rebounds and also had four assists.

A minute and a half later, Ethan Price drained his only 3-pointer of the game to increase Eastern’s lead to four, 76-72. Eastern made four of its next five shots and – coupled with a much stronger defensive effort – rather suddenly had an 86-74 lead, and the game was out of the Vikings’ reach.

“We do a bad job sometimes of losing focus and not making simple plays,” Riley said, “but at the end of the day our guys make up for it with some pretty high IQ (plays), and we get easy shots around the rim.”

Senior guard Deon Stroud scored 12 points and hit a season-high 3-of-5 3-pointers, part of a barrage of long-distance shooting for the Eagles, who made a season-high 16-of-31 3s. They were 14 of 20 from 2-point range and shot 58.8% overall, their second-best percentage of the season. Their 19 assists marked their third-highest total of the year.

Price, who last year led the Eagles in fouls, played nearly 31 minutes Thursday and for the first time in 50 career games wasn’t called for a foul.

Portland State (6-9, 0-2) played without senior Cameron Parker, who leads the team in assists and is the Vikings’ second-leading scorer. He was suspended for one game by the Big Sky following an incident in the postgame handshake after his team’s loss to Sacramento State last week.

That Sacramento State team – which beat Idaho 85-83 in overtime Thursday – plays Eastern at 2 p.m. Saturday in Cheney. The Hornets, 9-6 overall, are one of three Big Sky teams that are 2-0 in conference play.