PROVO, UT. -- Maybe their luck will be better in Las Vegas than it was in Provo.
The Eastern Washington University men's basketball team went more than 10 minutes without scoring to fall behind 33-2 and the Eagles went on to lose 91-34 at Mountain West Conference foe Brigham Young on Saturday (Dec. 19) in Provo, Utah.
Eastern's Mark Dunn scored the first basket just 46 seconds into the game, but Eastern didn't score again for a span of 10:20 until 8:54 remained in the first half. In the meantime, Eastern missed 13 shots and had seven turnovers as the Cougars went on a 33-0 run to take a commanding 33-2 advantage.
The Eagles trailed at halftime 55-14, and the Cougars led by as many as 58 points in the second half before winning by 57.
"We did a good job of coming out and opening the game by playing the right way Thursday night in Reno," Eastern head coach Kirk Earlywine said of his team's 73-70 loss Dec. 17 at Nevada. "Tonight we took a knock-out punch early and we were not able to regain our composure."
The Cougars are now 10-1 while the Eagles fell to 4-7. Eastern closes its pre-Christmas schedule with two games at the Hoop TV Las Vegas Classic at the Orleans Arena (Dec. 22-23). Eastern will take on Chicago State in a night game on Dec. 22, then turnaround less than 24 hours later and play an afternoon game versus either Wagner or Jackson State. Both games will be available via webcast at http://www.hooptv.net.
Following a short Christmas break, the Eagles play at nationally-ranked Gonzaga on Dec. 28 before hosting Sacramento State in a Big Sky Conference game on Dec. 31 at 3:05 p.m.
Dunn and Jeffrey Forbes each scored eight points for the Eagles against BYU, with Forbes making all six of his free throws.
The Eagles made only 27 percent of their shots (13-of-48) overall from the floor, 1-of-7 three-pointers and 7-of-16 free throws for 44 percent. Brigham Young made 64 percent of its shots and out-rebounded Eastern 45-17.
"I told our players that I hope and expect this to be an aberration," Earlywine said. "We were only 48 hours removed from playing pretty well. For some reason, tonight we lost our poise on both ends of the floor.
"We couldn't get our players in the right spots to run our sets," he continued. "And when we were in the right spots, we didn't execute. We didn't throw the ball to the right spots and we took bad shots. I didn't know what I was looking at in the first half -- it didn't look like our team. We lost our poise.
"On the other end of the floor we didn't guard the ball, we missed simple rotations and we didn't block-out. BYU is not a good rebounding team and they out-rebounded us by almost 30. We played as bad as you can possibly imagine. For the life of me, I can't figure out what happened to our team."
Jimmer Fredette led BYU with 20 points, and Tyler Haws and Jackson Emery combined for 29 points and 14 rebounds.
