Eastern men sweep Montana State on road

BOZEMAN - The offense was on display in a big way Feb. 13 in Worthington Arena against Montana State. But it was defense that more quietly helped Eastern Washington topple the Bobcats 85-69 in a Big Sky Conference men's basketball game.

Saturday's victory, coupled with a 93-77 triumph Feb. 11, gave Eastern (9-2 Big Sky, 10-6 overall) a sweep of road games and allowed the Eagles to remain on a seven-game winning streak. It also moved them into a 1 ½ game lead over a handful of teams with four games remaining in conference play.

"Defense was what won us this game," Eastern head coach Shantay Legans said. "Rebounding was the key – I thought we could stop them in certain ways, but they are a very good offensive rebounding team."

Leading 36-33 at halftime, Eastern blew it open as Ellis Magnuson scored nine of EWU's points during an 18-2 surge. But again, it was defense that showed itself off as over nine minutes when MSU failed to score a field goal.

A 3-pointer by Michael Meadows put the Eagles up by 24 with 11:18 left. The lead never dipped below 16 the rest of the way as Eastern has now won 15 of the last 19 meetings against Montana State.

While the Eagles were out rebounded on Thursday and gave up 17 offensive boards, they allowed just seven Bobcat second chances in the rematch. "Our goal was to hold them to eight offensive rebounds or under, and we did that," Legans said. "That was a key part to me."

Tanner Groves led Eastern with 16 points, 14 in the first half. Meadows had 15, including 11 in the second half, and Magnuson scored nine of his 11 after intermission. Kim Aiken Jr. also had a double-double with 12 points and 13 rebounds while Tyler Robertson had the first double-double of his career with 10 points and 10 rebounds.

Thursday night Eastern led 49-42 at the half but a Montana State run, capped by Xavier Bishop's 3-pointed with 15:06 remaining trimmed the Eagles' lead to 58-57.

That's when the free throws began to fall and the lead restored as Eastern sank 12 in a row - eight straight from Kim Aiken Jr. - for a 70-63 lead. Then came key long-range field goals with back-to-back three's from Jack Perry and Aiken and the lead was back to 76-64.

That string of free throws was part of an Eastern record where they finished 27-of-28 for a .964 percentage - a new school mark for foul shooting accuracy. The Eagles made their first 25 consecutive free throws.

"We were struggling from the free throw line early this season, but we've seemed to hit a groove," Legans said. "Offensively our team did a very good job of moving the ball around. We had 15 assists, but I thought we could have had 10 more because we missed some chippies."

Tanner Groves equaled his career high with 26 and finished with a double-double with 12 rebounds and sank all nine of his free throws. Meadows scored a career-high 21 while Aiken added 20, including an 8-of-8 performance from the line. Meadows' 17 points at halftime tied his previous career high in the first half alone.

Eastern did all of its damage over the weekend without Jacob Davison, the preseason MVP in the Big Sky Conference, who remained back in Cheney suffering reportedly from flu-like symptoms. 

The Eagles will play a home-and-home series with Montana (5-7, 9-10) tonight (Thursday, Feb. 18) at Reese Court and Saturday Feb. 20 in Missoula beginning at 11:05 a.m. Pacific time. The regular season concludes with a pair of games March 3-5 vs. Idaho State (7-3, 11-7) at Reese Court.

Paul Delaney is a retired former Free Press Publishing reporter and can be reached at pauldelaney53@comcast.net.