Eastern Washington men benefit from long win streak entering Big Sky Tournament
Isaiah Moses hasn’t played in the Big Sky men’s basketball tournament before, but he’s no stranger to the pressure he and the Eastern Washington men’s basketball team will face in Boise.
In each of the last two Big West Conference tournaments, Moses was a key player for UC Riverside. But neither appearance went well for the Highlanders.
In 2024, they won their opener as a No. 5 seed before losing to Dan Monson’s fourth-seeded Long Beach State team (the eventual tournament champions) 86-67. In 2025, Moses scored a game-high 30 points in the third-seeded Highlanders’ 96-83 loss to No. 7 Cal Poly, ending their appearance after just one game.
On Monday, after Eastern Washington (13-18, 11-7 Big Sky) closed out the regular season with an 85-81 home loss to Idaho (17-14, 9-9), Moses identified a commonality on those two underachieving Riverside teams.
“At Riverside, we had talented teams, but we didn’t have that sense of urgency, that this is your life on the line,” the redshirt senior guard said. “We need to have that urgency, we need to be on 10. Not in a way that we’re scared to lose, but in a way that we’re going to fight with everything we can to win.”
Eastern, which will open this year’s Big Sky Tournament as the No. 3 seed at 7 p.m. Monday against No. 6 Weber State (16-15, 10-8), hasn’t won a game at this event since 2022. That includes back-to-back losses as the No. 1 seed in 2023 and 2024 and then a 66-53 first-round loss to Northern Arizona last year as the No. 8 seed.
Basketball teams have shorter memories than fanbases: None of the Eagles’ current players participated in this event at Idaho Central Arena in Boise even as recently as 2024.
And if anyone knows how to win a tournament like this, it’s Monson, whose Long Beach State team won three games in three days – with Monson coaching less than a week after being fired – to claim an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament.
“I think it’s just a mindset, a toughness mentality,” Monson said. “On just adrenaline alone you ought to be able to play three games in three days with a chance to go to the NCAA Tournament.”
Idaho, the No. 7 seed, faces the challenge of winning four games in five days, starting at 7 p.m. Saturday against No. 8 Sacramento State (10-20, 6-12). The winner of that will play No. 2 Montana State (18-13, 12-6) in the quarterfinals at 7 p.m. Sunday.
One of those three teams would then face either Eastern Washington or Weber State in the semifinals on Tuesday.
Idaho’s victory in Cheney on Monday ended Eastern Washington’s eight-game winning streak, but it didn’t change either team’s seed in the tournament. Both were locked in regardless of their game’s outcome.
EWU senior guard Jojo Anderson said the Eagles just need to be sure that the loss wasn’t in vain.
“If we do what we know we can do and win the conference tournament and get to the national tournament, this game doesn’t mean much,” Anderson said. “But we’ve got to make sure it means something.”
Eastern split its two meetings with Weber State this season, with each team winning at home. Idaho swept Sacramento State and split with Montana State.