EWU notebook: Noah Cronquist latest in line of solid kick returners; over 100 penalty yards mar first win

Eastern Washington’s return game is having something of a renaissance the last couple of years.

The latest face of it is Noah Cronquist.

The redshirt senior amassed 178 return yards, providing a considerable boost in field position for the Eagles, who earned their first win of the season, 52-31 over Western Illinois on Saturday at Roos Field in Cheney.

In the first half , Cronquist returned a punt for 21 yards to set up Eastern’s first touchdown and then another one 40 yards to set up their last before halftime, when the Eagles built a 27-17 lead.

“To get those returns after you get a stop on defense, and to just build on that even more (with a return) gets the juice going for the offense,” EWU grad senior linebacker Read Sunn said.

Cronquist also had a 60-yard kickoff return, his longest of the season, and a 52-yard reception early in the fourth quarter that set up another touchdown. He capped that drive with a two-point conversion to make the score 45-31 with 11:11 left in the fourth quarter.

Eastern ended up with an eight-yard advantage over WIU in average starting field position.

EWU head coach Aaron Best said that Cronquist is “too coachable” at times, because he wants to do everything right.

“That’s the way he lives his life,” Best said. “Sometimes you’ve got to take some calculated risks.”

Best said he put Cronquist on a one-cut limit on punt returns.

“He’s not allowed to cut twice,” he said. “He gets one, and then he’s got to get vertical.”

Through four games, Cronquist’s punt return average (15.3) ranks second in the Big Sky, as does his kick return average (25.6). That’s a one-tenth better than that of Montana’s Michael Wortham, who last year – wearing the No. 6 jersey now worn by Cronquist – set Eastern Washington’s single-season kickoff yardage record with 1,093 yards.

Kicking game struggles

One week after redshirt junior Soren McKee missed a 42-yard field goal in the final seconds of a 17-14 loss at Northern Iowa, true freshman Hunter McKee was the first kicker out to attempt a point-after on Saturday against Western Illinois, and it went through, giving the Eagles a 15-3 lead late in the first quarter.

But after that, the 2025 Mt. Spokane graduate missed his next point-after attempt wide left, and later in the quarter he pushed a 51-yard field goal wide right.

That was enough to prompt Best to go back to Soren McKee, who since the start of the 2022 season had made 105 of 105 point-after kicks. But that streak ended against the Leathernecks, when he missed a PAT after Nate Bell scored a touchdown with 52 seconds left in the second quarter.

Soren McKee rebounded in the second half, when he made two extra points and a 23-yard field goal.

“I wanted to challenge Hunter a little bit and give him a chance at home,” Best said. “Soren came in and got us where we needed to get to. It’s not where we’d like it today, but it’s a small sample size. We’re not going to evaluate solely on that one play.”

Soren McKee has been the team’s primary kicker since late in the 2022 season. Over that span, which includes 30 games, McKee has made 20 of 31 field-goal attempts.

Penalties creep up again

For the second game in a row, penalties were a noticeable problem for the Eagles against the Leathernecks.

They were called for 11 of them that cost 122 yards. The Eagles still won by three touchdowns, but it’s something Best said the team needed to address again this week after being flagged for nine in a three-point loss at Northern Iowa.

“The penalties are ridiculous when it comes down to it,” Best said. “Of the 11 of them, probably seven of them were controllables.”

The last time the Eagles were flagged for 11 penalties was on Sept. 28, 2021, in a 34-28 victory at home over Montana. The last time they were penalized as many yards as they were Saturday was in 2019, in a nonconference 59-31 victory over Lindenwood. In that game, they were flagged 13 times for 140 yards.

In losses at Incarnate Word and Boise State to start this season, the Eagles were penalized a combined eight times for 64 yards.

“It’s not a good trend,” Best said. “That makes the margin for winning that much slimmer.”

Next up: Eastern travels to Bozeman to play No. 4 Montana State (2-2), which is coming off a 17-0 home victory over Mercyhurst. Kickoff is set for 1 p.m. Pacific time on Saturday. The Bobcats have won the last four meetings between the two programs, including a 57-14 victory two years ago at Montana State.