Sophomore forward Kourtney Grossman continues to improve for EWU: ‘She’s just the hardest worker I know’

To hear Kourtney Grossman describe it, rebounding is really simple.

“It’s just, well, I’ll go down there and try to grab it,” the EWU sophomore forward said. “Sometimes I do, and sometimes I don’t.”

Regardless of whether rebounding really is that straightforward, what Grossman has already accomplished this women’s basketball season is notable – and what she is on pace to achieve is even greater.

With nine Big Sky Conference games to play, Eastern Washington is 11-11 overall and 4-5 in league play. The Eagles are home this week against Montana (7-14, 4-6) on Thursday and first-place Montana State (16-5, 9-1) on Saturday. Currently the Eagles sit in sixth place in the 10-team league.

“We’ve had a bunch of close games, so we have been talking about executing down the stretch and treasuring every possession,” senior guard Ella Gallatin said. “Honestly, we are just a super young team, so I think experience is a lot of it, and having the basketball IQ and situational awareness.”

Yet that youthfulness – four of the team’s five starters are freshmen or sophomores – is one aspect that makes these Eagles an intriguing bunch. And the play of Grossman, who is now 52 games into her college career, is emblematic of the ceiling this team has.

“She’s just the hardest worker I know,” Gallatin said of Grossman. “I think rebounding is all about effort, and she gives 100% every time.”

After averaging 8.6 rebounds during her first seven games this year, Grossman has crashed the boards with a degree of success that is unmatched in the Big Sky and nearly without parallel nationally. She has 286 rebounds across 22 games, and that average of 13 per game is the second-most across all of Division I (North Texas’s Megan Nestor has 303 in 22 games).

Grossman, who also averages 13.1 points per game, has grabbed at least 10 rebounds in every game since the start of December.

Among Big Sky players, Grossman is one of two averaging at least 10 rebounds per game, and she’s 2.7 per game ahead of the other: Antoniette Emma-Nnopu, at Weber State (10.3). EWU sophomore Jaecy Eggers is fifth in the league at 7.5 rebounds per game.

Grossman has racked up the five best single-game rebounding totals in the Big Sky this season, including a 23-rebound game against Denver and a 22-rebound effort against Idaho. Since the Big Sky started sponsoring women’s basketball in 1988, only Northern Arizona’s Amanda Hughes has collected more rebounds in a single game (24) than Grossman has.

With 15 more rebounds, Grossman would crack the Big Sky’s single-season individual top-20 rankings. With 86 more, she would tie Idaho State’s Natalie Doma – a recent inductee into the Big Sky’s Hall of Fame – for the No. 1 spot.

She has more work to do, however, to climb atop the Eastern Washington single-season record book: The No. 1 spot on that list belongs to Maria Loos, who had 422 in 1978-79. Grossman’s total from last season (314) ranks eighth in program history, with Loos holding three of the top seven totals (422, 402 and 348).

Last year, Grossman worked her way into the starting lineup but didn’t necessarily enter the season with a clearly defined role. This year, though, she knows what the team needs from her.

“This year, I already knew that’s something I could do,” she said, “and I have found that no matter what is going on, whether my shots are falling, I can always rebound if I just put in a consistent effort to go try and get them every time.”

EWU men head east to face Montana schools

After losing a pair of away contests last week, the Eagles men’s basketball team is back on the road again this week for one of its last two weekends away from Cheney this regular season.

Eastern (5-17, 3-6) will play at Montana at 6 p.m. Thursday and at Montana State at 7 p.m. Saturday, two teams with identical records at 13-10 overall and 7-3 in league play.

Since conference play began, Eastern has scored the second fewest points per game in the Big Sky (74.2) but has also allowed the fourth fewest (74.7). The Eagles’ shooting percentage (43.6) is the lowest in the league.