FCS football playoff future hangs on EWU-Davis outcome

CHENEY — The last time Eastern Washington and the University of California-Davis met on the football field a trip to Frisco, Texas and the Football Championship Subdivision national title game lay in the outcome.

That was on Dec. 8, 2018 in Cheney on Roos Field where the Eagles scored in the final minute for a 34-29 victory that sent them to the semifinals and a win over Maine. Eastern got the trip to Texas with a 50-19 win over the Black Bears, ultimately falling to North Dakota State 38-24.

Now, in the winter-spring Big Sky Conference season there are similar elements at stake for ninth-ranked Eastern Washington. They play at No. 11 UC Davis Saturday, April 3 this time at UC Davis Health Stadium in Davis, Calif. 

Kickoff is 1:05 p.m. and the game may be viewed via Pluto TV Channel or fans can also listen to the game on 700-AM ESPN, 105.3-FM, or via the web at tunein.com.

There are still four one-loss or better teams in the Big Sky — including EWU and UC Davis — so this week’s game is critical to the post-season playoff hopes for each team. The NCAA Football Championship Subdivision playoffs feature just 16 teams this year with only five at-large berths. 

“We treat the season on a week-by-week basis no matter who we play,” Eastern head coach Aaron Best said following his team’s 62-10 dismantling of Cal Poly on March 27. “We’ve put ourselves in a situation to be 3-1 going into that game against a very sound football team who scores a lot of points.”

Davis beat that same Cal Poly team the previous week 73-24.

UC Davis is 20-14 in its last 24 games under head coach Dan Hawkins, and three of those losses have been to the Eagles, who have won all eight of the games in the series which started in 2005. In 2017, in the first season for both schools with new head coaches, Eastern rallied for a 41-38 victory on Oct. 7 at Davis, Calif.

Paul Delaney is a retired former Free Press Publishing reporter and can be reached at [email protected].