Big Sky co-champs meet again in FCS quarterfinals

Used to be that the Football Championship Subdivision playoff committee sent all kinds of teams to Cheney that you had to Google to know where they were from.

Southeast Missouri, Wagner and Jacksonville State come to mind.

Now, in an effort to cut costs, they bracket as many teams as possible by geography. Thus, next up for Eastern Washington in the quarterfinals is UC Davis who wound up in a three-way tie for the 2018 Big Sky title.

“We won’t take anything for granted and we’ll prepare as if this is a new team with players we don’t know,” Eastern head coach Aaron Best said. “We don’t want to prepare for this any differently even though we’ve already played them before.

Kickoff is 1 p.m. at Roos Field in a rematch of a lopsided 59-20 showdown Nov. 10 that helped craft the tie for the title. Eastern trailed 10-0 early, then had scoring stretches of 21-, 14 and 24-straight points to win by 39.

Eastern and UC Davis both enter the quarterfinals with 10-2 records. The winner faces either Weber State or Maine, who play Dec. 7 in Ogden, Utah.

Rematches with league opponents are rare, but one just occurred in 2014 when Eastern met and defeated Montana 37-20. In 1985, when EWU was then a I-AA independent, the Eagles fell at Idaho 42-21 on Nov. 2 and then returned on Nov. 30 for a 42-38 win over the Vandals in a first-round game.

No. 4/3 ranked Eastern Washington University vs. 7/10 UC Davis, Saturday, Dec. 8, 1:05 p.m. Roos Field (8.600). TV: ESPN3. Radio: 700-AM ESPN and 105.3-FM in the Spokane/Cheney area. Larry Weir returns for his 28th season calling the play-by-play, with analysis handled by Paul Sorensen for the 16th year. Broadcasts begin one hour prior to kickoff and include an expanded post-game show.

Paul Delaney can be reached at pdelaney@cheneyfreepress.com.