Eastman Lifts Cougs Out Of Jam After Surviving His First Season, Coach Already Started On Second

Kevin Eastman’s first year at Washington State was exciting, frustrating, successful, unpredictable, satisfying, agonizing - everything but uneventful.

From off-season player defections to academic and disciplinary suspensions; from chicken pox to curfew violations; from last-minute collapses to miraculous late-game comebacks, the 1994-95 men’s basketball season was like a sampler plate from a coaching menu.

It even included a dessert tray featuring a fifthplace finish in the Pacific-10 Conference and a couple of wins in the National Invitation Tournament.

Still, it wasn’t enough to occupy Eastman’s attention for more than a few hours once it had ended.

At the airport in Buffalo, N.Y., on the morning after WSU’s 89-80 loss to Canisius in the quarterfinals of the NIT, Eastman dutifully made his rounds, talking individually with each of his three scholarship seniors - Rob Corkrum, David Vik and Joey Warmenhoven, who had donned a Cougars uniform for the last time the previous evening.

Each discussion was warm and sincere, but brief.

And by the time the team’s plane landed in Chicago, Eastman’s thoughts had already turned to next season, when he will welcome back all five starters and his two top reserves from a team that confounded most experts by finishing 18-12.

Following the departure of coach Kelvin Sampson to Oklahoma, the graduation of three key seniors and the off-season defections of freshman guard Nate Erdmann and junior-college recruit Ernie Abercrombie, WSU was picked to finish no higher than seventh in this season’s Pac-10 race.

Yet Eastman kept the program from unwinding.

He picked up a late JC recruit in Shamon Antrum, who turned out to be the Pac-10’s Newcomer of the Year. He talked incoming freshmen Chris Griffin and Carlos Daniel into honoring the letters of intent they had signed with Sampson. And he installed an uptempo, motion offense that seemed to enamor his returning players.

During the course of the season, junior forward Mark Hendrickson and sophomore guard Isaac Fontaine emerged as legitimate Division-I stars and sophomore Donminic Ellison - after fighting off academic deficiencies, a one-game suspension for breaking curfew and a severe case of chicken pox - developed into a solid point guard, who could be among the Pac-10’s best next winter.

Fontaine averaged 18.5 points a game and Hendrickson, an allconference selection, added 16.1, along with 9.0 rebounds. Griffin and Daniel gave the Cougars steady, unfreshmanlike minutes off the bench, and Tavares Mack, a 6-9 sophomore, showed flashes of brilliance whenever he managed to stay out of foul trouble.

Eastman’s returning players accounted for more than 90 percent of the team’s offense; his three departing seniors, less than 10.

“We’re real pleased with what we have coming back,” Eastman admitted during Friday’s layover at O’Hare International Airport. “And we also know there are a number of teams in our league that have some good players coming back, too.

“I haven’t really stopped to think about the specifics of who’s coming back on each team, but we certainly want to be in the hunt. Our hope is to get into the NCAA and see if we can’t advance in that next year.”

The only obvious weakness would seem to be depth.

Eastman started the 1994-95 season with only 10 scholarship players. He loses three to graduation and he signed only two recruits - Billy Coby and Richard “Tu Tu” Brown - during the early signing period last November.

In addition, his recruiting efforts were hindered by the trip to the NIT, which came during a live recruiting period that yielded little.

Now, Eastman and his staff will not be allowed to contact recruits again until April 6, which is less than a week prior to the late-signing date of April 12.

“We’re caught in kind of a bind,” Eastman said, admitting his team’s extended run in the NIT might negatively impact recruiting. “It has put us a little behind.

“That’s why early signing is so important, but we didn’t want to go overboard this year because we weren’t sure what we had. Hopefully, next year we’ll get the majority of it - if not all of it - done early.”

Of his two early signees, Eastman said he expects Brown, a transfer from South Plains (Texas) College, to have the most immediate impact.

“He’s a scorer, and that’s where we would want him to help us,” Eastman said of the 6-foot-4, 180-pound shooting guard, who averaged 16.4 points and 5.2 rebounds a game for a team that finished 20-10. “Then, hopefully, we can turn him into a pretty good defender, because he has the physical capabilities to do that.”

Coby, a 6-8, 240-pound wide-body forward, was considered to be a “project” when he was signed late last fall. But he shot nearly 77 percent from the field and averaged 18.8 points and 9.9 rebounds a game in leading Chaminade Prep of St. Louis, Mo., to a 19-10 record and a berth in the quarterfinals of the AAAA state tournament.

“We don’t need need Billy to have an immediate impact because of the three guys (Hendrickson, Mack and Daniel) we have coming back,” Eastman said. “If I knew we weren’t going to have any injuries, I think I’d leave our front line just the way it is, because it’s easier to rotate three than four and - as we found out this year - it’s hard to rotate five.”

Still, Eastman said he would like to sign one more wide-bodied recruit, maybe even another junior college prospect, who could give him some solid minutes off the bench and allow him to rest his front-liners and, perhaps, redshirt Coby.

“We’ll go wherever we can gets kids who are interested in us,” Eastman said. “But we have to be concerned with our budget, because we definitely have some constraints in that area.

“It’s by no means tops in the league, but it’s workable. We just have to stretch it and be as frugal as we can so we can make it stretch farther than some other programs might.”

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with story: WSU’s transition game Who’s leaving, who’s staying and who’s arriving to the Washington State University men’s basketball team next season: Who’s going Joey Warmenhoven 6-7 200 Sr. Guard 2.3 ppg 1.2 rpg David Vik 6-11 215 Sr. Forward 3.4 ppg 1.9 rpg Rob Corkrum 6-9 227 Sr. Forward 3.7 ppg 2.2 rpg Who’s staying Donminic Ellison 5-10 175 So. Guard 11.3 ppg 6.9 apg Shamon Antrum 5-10 170 Jr. Guard 13.7 ppg 4.3 rpg Isaac Fontaine 6-4 218 So. Guard 18.5 ppg 4.5 rpg Chris Griffin 6-1 196 Fr. Guard 5.0 ppg 1.7 rpg Mark Hendrickson 6-9 230 Jr. Forward 16.1 ppg 9.0 rpg Tavares Mack 6-9 218 So. Forward 8.6 ppg 4.8 rpg Carlos Daniel 6-7 215 Fr. Forward 4.4 ppg 2.9 rpg Who’s coming Richard Brown 6-3 180 Guard South Plains (Texas) College Billy Coby 6-8 240 Forward St. Louis, Mo. (Chaminade Prep)