Eastern Washington rallies past Idaho

Never a doubt, Drew Brandon? Not with your Eastern Washington basketball team trailing Idaho by 11 points with 93 seconds left and your leading scorer out with an injury? “No, we never feel like that,” the Eagles’ senior point guard said with hardly a shrug. “We’re such a close-knit group, the points on the board don’t really matter.” When they finally did matter, the scoreboard at Reese Court showed Eastern on the winning side of a 98-95 Big Sky Conference thriller Saturday afternoon. Disbelief gave way to pandemonium, which gave way to the big picture: The Eagles are in second place at 7-1 in the conference and 16-5 overall – one more win than coach Jim Hayford’s crew got all of last season. They’re also 11-0 at home, which was rocking during the Eagles’ comeback effort. “We never stopped believing,” Hayford said. That in turn was hard to believe, since the Eagles were playing down the stretch with at least three hands tied behind their backs: —Forward Venky Jois, the Eagles’ top rebounder and number-two scorer, was still struggling to find his form after missing two weeks with an ankle injury; —Guard Tyler Harvey, the national scoring leader, suffered a bruised quadricep in the first half (the extent of his injury was unclear Saturday night) and missed the last 71/2 minutes of regulation and the entire overtime while failing to score after halftime; —The Eagles had their worst game of the season at the foul line, barely topping 50 percent (13 for 25) and missing some key shots down the stretch. But still they came on, urged on by a crowd of 3,017 that was easily the biggest of the year at Reese Court. Down by 17 with 81/2 minutes left and still trailing 81-70 with 1:33 to play, the Eagles got six quick points on a layin and a foul shot from Bogdan Bliznyuk and and a 3-pointer from Felix Von Hofe. It was still 83-79 for Idaho with 36 seconds left, when Brandon missed the first of two free throws but made the second. Idaho’s Arkadiy Mkrtychyan returned the favor, and EWU’s Ognjen Miljkovic drained a 3-pointer to make it a one-point game, 84-83, with 20 seconds left. Six seconds later, Idaho’s Sekou Wiggs made one of two foul shots, but Brandon did the same with 7 seconds left to make it 85-84. Fouled immediately, Mkrtychyan made one of two, setting the Eagles up with a tie-or-win scenario. Brandon, who barely missed a triple-double (18 points, 10 assists, nine rebounds) took the ball the length of the court, saw his 3-point shooters were well-guarded, and laid the ball in a split second before the buzzer sounded. There was more work ahead, and true freshman Bogdan Bliznyuk was up to the task: He had seven of his team-high 21 points and did most of the heavy lifting inside with two of his game-high 15 rebounds. “We have a freshman with a lot of guts and courage,” Hayford said. “If he gets 14 rebounds, and not 15, then we don’t win. He was big inside for us,” Hayford said. The teams traded buckets in the overtime until Mkrtchyan hit a layin with 1:13 left to put the visitors ahead 95-94. Jois answered 14 seconds later with a layin to put the Eagles ahead 96-95, but Idaho guard Mike Scott went to the line after a foul by Felix Von Hofe. Scott, who led all scorers with 25, missed both free throws with 41 seconds to play. Eastern ran down the clock until Bliznyuk drove the baseline for a layin, and Jois blocked Scott’s 3-point shot to clinch the win. When it was over, senior guard Parker Kelly called it “the top game for me at Reese Court.”