On the heels of its first road win of the conference season, Montana looks to complete a difficult road trip and hand Eastern Washington its first home loss of the season. Behind 12 threes and some stingy defense, Montana topped Idaho 70-57 on Thursday.
Eastern Washington, in its first season without Venky Jois, the school’s all-time leading scorer, has opened Big Sky play 2-0 with wins over Idaho and a convincing win over Montana State on Thursday night. Eastern shot 67 percent from the field and hit 7 of its 10 threes in the second half of the 82-64 win over the Bobcats. Senior graduate transfer Jacob Wiley was a force on Thursday, hitting 10 of his 15 shots for a team-high 25 points. Wiley also pulled down 10 rebounds, dished out seven assists and blocked five shots.
Wiley, a former Montana Grizzly and two-time NAIA All-American before coming to Cheney, has been a revelation for the Eagles in the post-Jois era.
In his two Big Sky games, Wiley is averaging 24 points on 68 percent shooting and is grabbing 9.5 rebounds and handing out four assists per game. Wiley is also leading the league with four blocked shots per outing. He has been instrumental in creating more scoring opportunities for the Eagles with his four offensive rebounds per game.
With Wylie leading a formidable trio that includes the combined 33.4 points from Bogdan Bliznyuk and Felix Von Hofe, Eastern has been the most dominant team in the early part of the Big Sky season. The Eagles are leading the conference in scoring defense, scoring margin, offensive and defensive field goal percentage and are hitting 55 percent of their 3-point attempts.
This is what Montana coach Travis DeCuire said about the Idaho-Eastern Washington road trip following the Grizzlies’ practice Wednesday afternoon.
RELATED: Eastern chases Big Sky title in post-Jois era
This is one of the most difficult road trips of the season, how does the team approach it?
“It’s a very difficult one. The environment at Idaho, you have to create your own energy. There is not a lot of people there, not a lot of noise. They’re gonna play physical and they play every game like a championship game; they’re gonna be emotional and involved.
“Then you have a quick turnaround for an afternoon game is very difficult in terms of prep. The most important thing is being fresh and two years ago that’s part of how we got our win is we really watched film, we didn’t walk through, we didn’t shoot, we didn’t do anything. We just went in and tried to be as fresh as we could. We played a little angry. We’ll try to do the same thing with this one is be fresh and play basketball.”
It’s early, but how important is this road trip for you?
“All of them. I thought that last year we had probably the best record on the road in conference which allowed us to be a game away or in first place down the stretch. This is a road trip that I don’t know who sweeps it? I don’t think anyone swept it last year or the year before. To go in there and get a leg up on conference early would be beneficial.”
Idaho and Eastern were pretty different last year, how do you handle that turnaround?
“That’s why we have rules defensively. … Each prep we shouldn’t have to change too much; we don’t put in a new play book and what not to avoid having those issues because, to be honest, every travel partner in our conference is completely different than each other. The quick turnaround is very difficult when you try to put too much into what they do to change who you are. For us, it’s doing what we do well and we’ll emphasize a couple things that might be strengths and weaknesses or things that might affect our rules.”
Eastern has a pretty good frontline, including Jake Wiley, how do you defend that?
“We’ve seen good post players all year long so it’s nothing new to us. He’s a scrapper, he gets after it. He went to school here so he is going to have incentive to play his best basketball. But I don’t know that their front court is any better than any front courts we’ve seen all year. You start looking at Oregon, NC State, Washington State, teams like that that are way bigger than anyone we’ll see in our conference. We just need to do what we do.”
Other key information:
- Montana is ranked No. 157 in the kenpom.com rankings and is No. 211, fourth in the Big Sky, in ESPN RPI rankings.
- Eastern Washington, led by sixth-year coach Jim Hayford, is ranked No. 2228 in the kenpom.com rankings and is No. 96, first in the Big Sky, in the ESPN RPI rankings.
When: Saturday, 2 p.m. MDT
Where: Reese Court, Cheney (6,000)
Radio: KGVO 101.5 FM
Watch: watchbigsky.com
Series: Montana leads 66-41.
Last: 2016, Montana beat Eastern Washington 74-69 in the teams’ only meeting.
kenpom Prediction: Eastern Washington 52 percent (EWU, 72-71)
Probable starters
Montana
G – Ahmaad Rorie, 6-1, So., 16.7 ppg
G – Michael Oguine, 6-2, So., 8.8 ppg
G – Brandon Gfeller, 6-5, Sr., 5.4 ppg
F – Jack Lopez, 6-6, Sr., 7.1 ppg
F – Fabijan Krslovic, 6-8, Jr., 6.1 ppg
Eastern Washington
G – Luka Vulikic, 6-5, Fr., 3 ppg
G — Bogdan Bliznyuk, 6-6, Jr., 19 ppg
F – Felix Von Hofe, 6-5, Sr., 14.4 ppg
F – Jacob Wiley, 6-7, Sr., 15 ppg
F – Mason Peatling, 6-8, Fr., 3.5 ppg
