Men’s basketball’s first two conference games did not go as planned as they dropped to 6-8 overall and 0-2 in the Big Sky conference. With this rough start, the Eagles will have to fight from behind to defend their conference title.

University of Northern Colorado, which is 4-10 overall and 1-1 in conference, beat the Eagles, 96-90, on Dec. 31 for Eastern’s Big Sky Conference opener. Eastern led the game for almost the whole first half; the only time they were not leading was when a three-point shot beat the buzzer giving the Bears a two-point lead going into the half. This was only the third time out of 13 games that EWU trailed at halftime.

With the final minutes, EWU was trailing by only one bucket. The Bears went on a scoring streak, putting 10 points out of the 12 shots taken on the scoreboard with only 37 seconds remaining.

Forward Venky Jois went into the game ranked as the sixth overall player in the nation. He went 11 of 15 from the field and had his third double-double from the last five games played. Jois added a block shot on his school record, which moved him to the third spot on the Big Sky all-time list with 207 blocks.

Guard Austin McBroom had an 18-point game, totaling 112 points in his last five games and averaging 22.4 points per game.

“I want to give credit to Northern Colorado – they played and shot the ball really well,” said head coach Jim Hayford after the game. “But if we don’t develop more resistance against the other team, we’re going to be on the wrong side of these scores.”

The only way the Eagles could have recovered from losing a winnable road game was by winning their next road game against University of North Dakota. Unfortunately, that ended up not being the game with a tough loss of 79-71 on Jan. 2. This was Eastern’s 11th road game out of their 14 total games.

The Eagles started off in the right direction by recovering from a 10-point deficit in the first half and ended up leading by six points in the second half, but North Dakota ended up sealing the win at the end of the game. UND completed 67 percent of their shots in the second half which ultimately led to their victory.

Three Eagles scored in double digits, including Jois, forward Felix Von Hofe and McBroom. The game had nine lead changes and seven ties.

Eastern went through a scoring drought and were unable to score in the final minutes, including five missed attempts, until only 40 seconds left in the game. This led to them only making 38.7 percent of their field goal attempts.

Hayford commented on the difference in shooting percentages in the second half.oop ta

“Our team is going to be good – but the moment is now, I get it,” he said. “Teams are shooting over 60 percent against us in the second half and we’re still in close games. We need to get that number down – to 50 percent for starters. I’ve never seen anything like this, and I’m in year 17 as a head coach.”

Eastern is now 2-6 all-time against North Dakota since UND was added to the Big Sky in 2012-13.

On Jan. 9 the Eagles will host University of Idaho in their conference home opener. Idaho is 10-5 overall while being 2-0 in conference, being able to beat North Dakota in their previous match-up.

“It will be nice to be home, but Idaho is playing better than anybody else right now. They gave it to Washington State pretty good earlier this season, and they are playing really well. We beat them three times last year, so they are going to come at us with a lot of force,” Hayford said.