The Eastern Washington University men’s basketball team played against four former players and five former coaches in a neutral site game against Washington State on Thursday, Nov. 21. The Cougars won 96-81.
Last spring, after a 22-11 season where the Eagles were regular season conference champions, head coach David Riley chose to become the coach at WSU.
Eastern Washington hired on Dan Monson to take over for Riley. Monson coached at Long Beach State University in California for the last 17 years, and before that he was the head coach at Gonzaga University. In 1999, he led the Zags to the Elite Eight in the NCAA Tournament.
Players Casey Jones, Cedric Coward, Dane Erikstrup, Ethan Price and LeJuan Watts also transferred to Pullman.
All but Jones are key parts of Washington State’s lineup this season. They combine for 59.5% of the team’s 87.7 points per game. Jones will not suit up for the Cougars until 2027. He plans to go on a two-year mission and return to the team after one additional redshirt year.
Washington State’s players and coaches emphasized that their focus was on the basketball game itself, rather than the homecoming narrative.
After Washington State’s victory over Northern Colorado on Nov. 18, Coward was asked in a post-game interview about playing his old team.
“I love Eastern,” he said. “It’s a part of my heart. But at the same time, it’s basketball. There ain’t no friends on the court besides the brothers in the same jersey and the coaches with the same gear as you.”
Riley echoed Coward’s statement.
“We’re going to go approach it like we’re playing a good basketball team,” he said. “We don’t have any room for error to be thinking about the good old days and all that.”
Three of the four former Eagles combined for 53 points against EWU. Erikstrup led the team with 24 points and made 6 threes, Coward had 22 points, 9 rebounds, and 7 assists, and Watts contributed. Price played just 14 minutes prior to fouling out and did not score.
The Eagles elected to start the game with the team’s top scorer, redshirt junior Nic McClain, on the bench. He had started each of the team’s last five games and had a career-high 28 points in Eastern Washington’s most recent game against Cal Poly.
McClain played 30 minutes off the bench, third most on the team, and scored a team-high 24 points. He also had 7 rebounds and 6 steals. As of Nov. 22, he ranked fifth in the NCAA in steals per game with 3.4.
Senior guard Andrew Cook and sophomore guard Sebastian Hartmann also scored double-digit points. Cook had 20 points and Hartmann scored 16 points.
Former teammates on last season’s EWU squad started the game, as Erikstrup hit a three to give the Cougars the first lead of the game, which was quickly erased by a Hartmann three-pointer.
The teams played closely throughout the start of the first half, with neither team gaining a lead of larger than two points until sophomore guard Isaiah Watts made a layup to give WSU a 19-15 lead with 10:59 left in the first half.
Watts’ score kicked off a 21-5 run for Washington State that included 6 points from Erikstrup and 5 from Coward, and the Cougars had a 38-20 lead with less than seven minutes remaining in the half. The Eagles were unable to cut the Cougar lead to less than 13 points for the remainder of the game.
Eastern Washington fell to 1-5 under new head coach Monson. They started the season 1-6 last year under Riley, before winning 12 of their next 13 games. The next home game for the Eagles is Wednesday, Dec. 4 at 6:00 p.m. against North Dakota.
