Eastern Washington football: A crucial win, another onside surprise and a milestone for Aaron Best

After losing three other one-score games, the Eastern Washington football team was able to hold on to one Saturday in Sacramento for a 35-28 victory over the 18th-ranked Sacramento State Hornets.

It was an important win for the Eagles, who improved to 2-4 overall and 1-1 in Big Sky play with six games to go. The next one up for Eastern is at home Saturday against No. 6 UC Davis, which pummeled Cal Poly 56-10 on Saturday to improve to 3-0 in the Big Sky.

For Sac State (2-4, 0-2), the loss leaves them as the only Big Sky team without a conference win, as Northern Colorado and Portland State both picked up road victories on Saturday.

That the Eagles came out ahead was largely due to a rushing offense that the Hornets simply could not stop, as Eastern matched a season-high 54 carries and gained a season-best 286 yards on them, including four touchdowns. The last time they scored that many times on the ground was on Oct. 9, 2021, at Northern Colorado.

Sac State came into the game allowing just 67.8 rushing yards per game, and the Eagles’ strong performance against the Hornets was another example of Eastern’s offense basically having its way: redshirt junior quarterback Kekoa Visperas completed 15 of 17 passing attempts for 141 yards and a touchdown to running back Tuna Altahir, who also scored a rushing touchdown.

Senior wide receiver Efton Chism III added seven catches for 67 yards. Chism, who has at least seven catches in each game this season, leads the Big Sky with 54 receptions and is second in the league with 580 receiving yards.

Sac State also had just one sack after entering the game with a Big Sky-best 19 this season.

“Offensively, we wore them down and it was a good, stout rush defense that we attacked in a lot of different ways,” EWU head coach Aaron Best said in a postgame radio interview. “There is a ton of credit that goes to the offensive line, tight ends and running backs. We executed at a high level on offense for the better part of the day.”

Surprise onside kick pays off again

For the second game in a row, redshirt junior kicker Jackson Cleaver perfectly executed an onside kick.

This time he dribbled it slightly to his right – not straight ahead as he did against Montana – and Conner O’Farrell recovered it.

It was a crucial play. Eastern had just tied the game at 21 after driving for a touchdown to open the second half, and up to that point the Eagles’ defense hadn’t kept Sacramento State’s offense out of the end zone.

With a short field ahead of them, the Eagles ran eight straight times for 55 yards, capped by Jared Taylor’s rush to the left pylon for a 14-yard score, his third rushing touchdown of the season. That gave Eastern a 28-21 lead.

From there, the Eagles’ defense stopped the Hornets on three consecutive drives, including one that ended with Alphonse Oywak’s first-career interception. Eastern has now forced three turnovers this season and has committed just two.

Thanks to the onside kick and the interception, the Hornets ran just four plays and gained six yards in the third quarter, possessing the ball for just 90 seconds.

EWU D toughens up on third down

Part of the reason Sacramento State’s offense was so effective in the first half was because it was able to convert on 7 of 8 third downs, and the one time it didn’t convert it was able to do so on the subsequent fourth down.

But in the second half, the Hornets failed to convert on all five third downs it faced, and their one fourth-down conversion came on a fake punt.

Hornets redshirt freshman quarterback Carson Conklin finished with 238 passing yards and four touchdowns on 21-of-35 attempts, but in the second half he was just 7-of-16.

Junior running Eljiah Tau-Tolliver saw a similar decline after half. Of his 94 rushing yards, all but 10 of those came in the first half.

“There was a tone of resilience,” Best said. “We talked at halftime with the defensive staff that we can’t keep doing what we’ve been doing. We have to challenge the team to make the opponent play faster. We did that by putting a little bit more pressure on them defensively.”

Best reaches milestone

The victory was the 50th as a head coach for Best, whose record is now 50-36 in seven-plus seasons. It was also Best’s 11th win over a ranked opponent, and, overall, he needs three more wins to tie Paul Wulff, who in eight seasons went 53-40.

The three coaches higher than Wulff on the program’s list of all-time victories are W.B. (Red) Reese (66-29-9), Beau Baldwin (85-32) and Dick Zornes (89-66-2).