CHENEY — The Eastern Washington men saw their preseason record slip to 1-5 following a pair of losses to Washington State 96-81, Nov. 21 and 79-68 at California Baptist, Nov. 23.
In a game played at Spokane Veterans Memorial Arena before 3,854 fans, Eastern head coach Dan Monson admitted he lost his bet that the Cougars would not connect from 3-point range.
“Today was more my fault,” Monson said. “We said we were committed to keeping these guys out of the paint, making them shoot threes, and hoping they wouldn’t make them. But they made them.”
While Eastern hit an awful 16% from long-range, WSU drained 3-pointers at a .533 clip.
Three Eagles finished in double figures led by Nic McClain’s 24 points, Andrew Cook’s 20 and Sebastian Hartmann with 16.
McClain gave Eastern its only lead of the game at the 11:57 mark of the first half and from there it was all WSU which went on several big runs and built s lead for which Eastern could never recover.
Former Eagle, Cedric Coward, who transferred to WSU when his coach David Riley was hired in Pullman, dropped a 3-pointer to cap an 11-2 run.
Starting at 9:37, WSU added to Eastern’s misery outscoring the Eagles 14-0, keyed by back-to-back 3’s from another former Eagle, Dane Erikstrup and Cougs were up 38-20.
WSU led 51-36 at halftime with the teams each scoring 45 in the second 30 minutes. Erikstrup led the Cougs with 24 points with Coward just behind at 22.
Against Western Athletic Conference member Cal Baptist in Riverside, a strong opening half where they had a 41-32 lead at halftime led to the win by the Lancers.
The Eagles were led by McClain’s 24 points and seven rebounds. Sebastian Hartmann added 13 points while Andrew Cook added 12 more.
Eastern remained in California for a Nov. 26 game at UC-Santa Barbara and traveled to Salt Lake City to face Big-12 Utah, Nov. 30. They face former Big Sky foe, North Dakota, Dec. 4 in a Summit League Challenge at Reese Court.
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