EWU coach Jim Hayford takes time, builds Eagles from scratch
For those who didn’t start paying attention until the win over Indiana, basketball success didn’t happen overnight at Eastern Washington.
That it happened at all is a story with enough drama to fill four basketball seasons, which is how long it took coach Jim Hayford to get the Eagles to what they are now: giant-killing, Big Sky Conference champions who’ve taken their preseason goal of 20 wins and left it in the dust.
Next stop: Missoula, for the Big Sky tournament. Win that and the 23-8 Eagles are in the NCAAs for only the second time in school history; lose and they’re still likely to make the NIT.
All that on a team with only three seniors.
The future seems so bright, it’s easy to forget that the road to basketball success at Eastern Washington is paved with injury, disappointment and even a few car parts. Two years ago, the young Eagles were battered, bandaged and losing 21 games while Hayford used 14 different starting lineups.
“Through these building years, it’s hard when you’re losing,” Hayford said. “A piece of you goes when you lose, but it’s made me a better coach, a better person.”
Building a culture
There were a lot of pieces missing in the spring of 2011, when Hayford traded the certainty of success at Whitworth for a future that was anything but certain – trading the koi pond for the shark tank, as Spokesman-Review columnist John Blanchette put it at the time.
Said Hayford: “(Former coach) Warren Friedrichs handed me a great program at Whitworth, but at Eastern there hadn’t been a lot of continuity … not a lot of culture in place.”
The two previous coaches had been fired and the program was starving on a steady diet of transfer players. After firing Kirk Earlywine in March of that year, Eastern athletic director Bill Chaves took a long look around before hiring Hayford, who in 10 years had taken Whitworth to eight 20-win seasons.
Or about eight more than Eastern had in nearly three decades as a Division I program.
“About the only thing he didn’t do was win a national title,” said Chaves, whose own résumé looks pretty strong these days, considering he also hired football coach Beau Baldwin.
Like Baldwin – who had won a national title a few months earlier – Hayford was committed to success over the long haul, with four-year recruits, high academic standards and community outreach.
Winning would have to wait, especially after incumbent point guard Glen Dean abruptly left the program a month after Hayford arrived. The following year, the new staff inherited a talented group of upperclassmen and reached the postseason.
The heavy lifting came in 2012-13, when the Eagles fielded the youngest team in Division I. Six underclassmen started 97 games, while transfer point guard Justin Crosgile quit the team in midseason and forward Collin Chiverton – the Big Sky Newcomer of the Year in 2011-12 – was physically and emotionally unable to contribute.
A month later, senior guards Kevin Winford and Jeffrey Forbes were injured in an auto accident during a road trip at North Dakota. They recovered, but the Eagles never did, finishing 10-21 overall and 7-13 in the Big Sky.
In all, Hayford used 14 different starting lineups that year. Amid the rubble there was one shining moment, when redshirt freshman Tyler Harvey came off the bench to lead an improbable comeback at Northern Arizona.
A star was born that night, even if few people knew it at the time. A few weeks later, Venky Jois was named Big Sky Freshman of the Year, confirming what Hayford knew when he reached Down Under to recruit Jois from his home in Melbourne, Australia.
“The hardest part was taking the guys through their freshman year, teaching guys how to play with each other, and at the same time having them adjust to a new level of competiton,” Hayford said.
More adjustments came off the field. Hayford borrowed a page from his Whitworth days and formed the Sixth Man Club, which to date has donated about $750,000 to supplement EWU’s skimpy budget for recruiting, travel, equipment and other costs.
Hayford and his staff at the time, Shantay Legans and Craig Fortier, rejuventated the Eagles’ summer kids camp and raised the team grade-point average; last year it stood at 3.07.
Steady progress
By the fall of 2013, it was time to show improvement on the court. Attendance the previous year was only 1,141 per home game – Whitworth averaged 1,160 – and Hayford’s entertaining 3-point-shooting game hadn’t borne fruit in the win column.
More wins followed that year, but the Eagles struggled on the road and their defense hadn’t caught up to the offense. Their postseason hopes came down to the final home game at Reese Court, where they lost an 82-78 heartbreaker to Weber State.
The final ledger was 15-16 overall and 10-10 in the Big Sky as the Eagles narrowly missed out on the Big Sky tourney.
“The hard days are over,” Hayford said at the time, adding that he would no longer use youth as an excuse for losing.
Expectations ratcheted higher in the offseason, when Hayford was given a pay raise and the Big Sky media and coaches picked the Eagles to finish in the top tier.
They didn’t disappoint, winning nine of their first 10, including the stunning 88-86 win over Indiana. More notoriety came when guard Tyler Harvey vaulted to the top of the national scoring charts. He’s still there, scoring 22.9 points a game and attracting more media attention from around the country.
The team has been a presence in the mid-major rankings, its RPI for most of the season was higher than half the Pac-12, and attendance for the last five home games averaged 2,999.
“It feels like the program is gaining momentum,” Chaves said.
And not looking back.