Both the men’s and women’s USU Eastern Basketball teams will resume SWAC action on Saturday.
Despite the Christmas break, neither team has sat idle. The women headed to Oceanside, Cali. for a tournament, in which they took second place. The men stayed home to concentrate on practices and non-conference games. On Wednesday, they beat Western Wyoming 92-76.
Women’s head coach Dave Paur was pleased with how well the team is shaping up this year. He said that even in losing the championship game at Oceanside, the team had a chance to win until the very end. The Eastern women beat Barstow 87-58 in the first game. They also took out Arizona Western by ten points with the score of 78-68 before losing to Eastern Arizona 73-63 in the championship game.
The fast pace run and shoot offense they are running has really paid off, according to Paur.
The Lady Eagles sit at 7-9 overall and 1-1 in SWAC play.
USU Eastern men’s basketball coach Adjalma Becheli said he made the decision not to take the team to any tournaments over the break because he did not want to give up the practice time. The Eagles came out a little rusty in Wednesday night’s game, but held even with an equally cold Western Wyoming team.
The tempo picked up in the second half of play, but it wasn’t until the final ten minutes of the contest that Eastern took charge.
Coach Vando is cautiously optimistic about his team’s prospects for conference play. He knows with each team seeing each other three times, it becomes very tough. He said that this is the only NJCAA conference that has the teams facing each other more than twice. The Eagles are 14-1 overall and 2-0 in conference action.
“It comes down to details, adjustments and mental toughness,” explained Vando. “We face some very good teams in our conference and I hope we will still play at the level we did in our first two games against NIC and CSI.”
The men will take on the Colorado Kings at home on Friday night at 7:30 before playing Colorado Northwestern Community College on Saturday at 5:00 p.m. The women will also play CNCC at home at 3:00 p.m.
