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 said. “The past three seasons have produced 66 wins” and three consecutive postseason appearances.

Other bullet-points he rattled off included:

• An NCAA Tourna-

ment berth in 2015

• An NBA draftee in Tyler Harvey

• A Big Sky Confer- ence MVP in

Jake Wiley

• Two Freshmen of the Year with

Venky Jois and

Bogdan Bliznyuk

Finishing 22-12, but falling 91-81 at Wyoming in the College Basketball Invitational March 15, the Eastern basketball program reached a threshold only twice visited in the 34-year history in NCAA Division I play at the school. Since 1983-84, the only other times EWU has won 20 games came in 1985-86 with 20-8 record, and 2014-15’s team at 26-9.

“I think we’ve checked the boxes of the things that make a program a program,” Hayford said. The next goal is to sustain that success.

And that will require a bigger and broader effort, because it is more than just assembling the roster and schedule.

Hayford feels confident the talent pipeline is well primed. “We’ve got a really good class coming in, we signed four freshmen in the fall,” Hayford said. “Now we’ll go look for one impact player in the spring,” adding, “That would be great if we could find another Jake (Wiley), absolutely great.”

A big goal — and large task it would appear — is getting the community to take notice.

“I’d like to see the whole university develop a plan so that we fill more seats at Reese Court,” Hayford said. Despite having a team that finished 15-1 at home, most games were played, painfully, in front of a scattering of fans in the Eagles 6,000-seat home.

Granted, the crowds have come a long way over the last six years, Hayford said. “But I’d like to double them,” he added.

Eastern’s average attendance of 2,286 was double the 1,101 average of the 2010-11, but that number was skewed by a pair of crowds of over 3,500 for the visits from the Montana schools.

And prying Spokane’s grip away from Gonzaga, despite virtually zero ticket availability, well good luck.

It’s a two-pronged attack, Hayford explained. “That requires us to keep doing well on the court and a marketing effort from the school.”

“As a coach you can only do so much,” Hayford said. “I’ve got to recruit players, develop players and raise money.”

Hayford identified what he thinks are two key areas to improve and that includes how the students are engaged, and reaching out to the Cheney community.

“I just think we need to do a whole lot better job of inviting the city of Cheney and being the hometown team,” Hayford said. “This is a great, inexpensive alternative for great family entertainment.”

Hayford references how Eastern football has become so popular at Roos Field, and how he’d like to see that same love affair at Reese Court. “What they have done, it brought pride to the community,” Hayford said.

“Recently, that’s what we’ve done.”

Paul Delaney can be reached at [email protected].