Hayford plans to keep building the basketball brand at Eastern

Six years ago next week, March 29 to be exact, the newly announced Eastern Washington University head basketball coach, Jim Hayford, took to the podium at the Spokane Club to address the gathering.

One doesn’t go into coaching without some trepidation as to what lies ahead in the road. But when he was elevated from a Division III job at Whitworth to the D-I role with the Eagles, there had not been a lot of success for those making the sizeable leap.

But as he looked back at the last six years, Hayford seems to have done just fine by many accounts.

“I think we’ve established a program,” Hayford...