Last season, Eastern Washington went 10-20 with a 7-9 record in Big Sky Conference play. They were led by a first year coach in Jim Hayford, who was pretty disappointed, as was the rest of his staff and his team when leading scorer Glen Dean transferred. They will now be led by the trio of Cliff Colimon (a senior) and Jeffrey Forbes and Kevin Winfored (both juniors). The three of them combined to average over 30 points per game. The low blocks, however, are manned by two undersized big men in Cliff Ederaine and Tremayne Johnson.

Line: Oregon -12.5
Moneyline: Oregon -900, EW +650

Tipoff time: 7:00 PM EST

Betting Odds taken from Bookmaker

So far this season, for Eastern Washington, however, the story has been Collin Chiverton, who is averaging 25 points per game over their first two games, after scoring 25 in both games. His shooting percentage hasn’t been particularly good after going 8 of 24 in the opener and 9 of 21 in the win over South Dakota. Surprisingly, in the opener, Eastern Washington lost by only 8 points to the #23 ranked Gonzaga Bulldogs. In that game, the afrorementioned Colimon put up 17 points on 6 of 16 shooting while hitting 3 of 7 three point attempts. Ederaine started and scored only 2 points, while Tremayne Johnson appears to have lost his starting spot to Laron Griffin, at least for the time being. Johnson played 17 minutes in the loss to Gonzaga but scored only 5 points while going 2 of 7 from the floor. To have a chance against a better team like Oregon, they are going to have to get better play on the interior, especially since leading scorer Chiverton is a bit undersized at 6’6″ – though he prefers to stay on the perimeter where he shot 6 of 12 from three against Gonzaga.

Last season, Oregon participated in the CBI for post season play where they won 5 of 6 and took the CBI title. Their 14-16 regular season record was thus transformed into a pretty respectable 21-18 final record. Sadly for the Ducks, they lost a few transfers but bring in 9 new players this year and should be a lot deeper moving forward.

Because of the increase in depth, they will be able to play more man to man defense, rather than relying on the zone as they did last year. They dropped their season opener 78-64 to #7 ranked Vandy. They were led by the front court duo of Tony Woods and E.J. Singler, who combined for 9 of 13 from the floor while scoring 22 combined, as Singler nailed down both of his three point attempts. Last season, Singler averaged 11.7 points per game, 5.7 rebounds per game, and shot 39.9% from three while going 46.1% from the floor.

The balanced attack mentioned was in effect, as no Duck played more than 29 minutes in the game, and 10 players saw playing time, with 9 of them receiving double figure minutes. Brett Kingma scored 10 off the bench in only 14 minutes, hitting 2 of 6 threes. While the Ducks frontcourt led them offensively, they also gave up most of the scoring to Vandy, who was led by Jeffrey Taylor and John Jenkins, who outscored the Oregon duo 45 to 22. They will not need to be as tough on the interior against a team like Eastern Washington, however; though special attention will obviously be paid to Collin Chiverton, as he has proven to be Eastern Washington’s only legitimate threat so far this season.

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