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December 15, 2012 4:58 am ET by Edward Pelle

Game #9-161: Cal State Fullerton at Eastern Washington Eagles

November 30, 2012 9:05 pm
Reese Court
BBState Stats/Recap
I believe in a certain kind of sports traveler's karma.

Getting yourself to a specific location at a specific time requires that all axes align properly in fabric of space-time. For those Cartesianally inclined it means the x-axis, y-axis and z-axis have all intersected at some locus called the game. You dig?

Now if you believe in karma, you also have to accept the concept of free will, because the choices we make are constantly affecting us.

What choices are the most critical for the sports traveler? The most intimate? Plotting out which games to attend of course.

Let's set forth the theory that if you choose the right games to attend the universe will generally comply with your choices. Choose the wrong games...and well, then you get diarrhea on a long flight or worse.

But how to know if you have made the "correct" choices?

The universe has a strange way of leaving signs for the observant. A differant way to read the tea leaves so to speak.

I took this picture shortly before leaving home in New York City. Notice the word horchata prominently spray painted at the top of the building.

My goal was to drive from Bozeman Montana to Cheney Washington to attend a Men's Basketball game at Eastern Washington University after having attended one at Montana State. Four hundred miles and change wasn't anything I couldn't handle but the road would take me across some mountain ranges. That stretch of highway between Missoula and Spokane is particularly epic as noted last year by Zach Bloxham, the kind of drive that questions a man's soul and or sanity. Is that really a one thousand foot drop six inches from my passenger side mirror?

It was shortly after the Montana State game that I found myself in a torrential downpour as I headed west following more or less the same route as Lewis and Clark. As I neared the border between Montana and Idaho I had climbed quite a bit in altitude and my vehicle's external thermometer was vacillating between 33 and 34 degrees fahrenheit. I'll split the difference and call it 1.5 degrees above freezing.

Given the weather ratio that one inch rain equates to roughly ten inches of snow I was well aware of the fact that I was a measly 1.5 degrees away from a major blizzard event probably near the twenty inch snow range. This would invariably make the highway impassable and the #bigskyroadtrip would start to become the #bigskycluster as I might get snowed in for a while.

Though my faith had not yet been rattled it alleved me to see this sign shortly before reaching the forbodingly named Lookout Pass. I took the picture of it on the return trip a few days later.

Another indicaton of good juju.

The rest of the ride went fairly smoothly and as I arrived on the campus of Eastern Washington University the rains subsided. More precisely the rain stopped from the time I parked my vehicle next to their "OH MY GOD LOOK AT ME, NEON RED FOOTBALL FIELD!!!!!", to the time I reached Reese Court, which wasn't yet opened and sits perhaps metaphorically behind "THE INFERNO!!!!".





It doesn't take a detective to figure out this is a school with a football first mentality. Driving around town and I use the term loosely since Cheney is mostly composed of the University and a small business district that caters to the University, there were numerous football posters and the like posted about. Not one mention of tonights season home opener for the Men's Basketball team, and this concerned me a bit. Later in the evening I returned to the "TOWERING INFERNO OF HELLFIRE AND BRIMSTONE!!!!" so I could park and walk over to the game. Plenty of spaces where available an hour before game time.

After watching warmups I was relieved that a decent sized late arriving crowd did arrive and a fairly large student section took over one side of the lower bowl like their close rival Gonzaga. A voice did come over the PA system later promising them ice cream in reward for their participation though.

Tonights game like the games I saw in previous nights would have the home team down early in this case down 46-39 at the half. Eastern Washington featured a lineup full of international players with three Australians and two Germans. One Australian born player freshman Venky Jois had a great game and led the charge back from the early deficit showing determination and fire. Venky played great defense, had 13 rebounds and 22 points.

When the Eagles tied the game at 60-60 at the 8:23 mark of the second half they never looked back adding to their lead and won 79-75. Every so often a player catches your attention with a stellar performance, I think Venky will be a name that will be heard from again in the future.

After the game I had a chance to catch up on some sleep before heading to University of Idaho which was my most reasonable distance to travel in between stops on my #bigskyroadrip and the weather was a little nicer.

One last lesson I forgot to mention is that not everything is a sign of the correct path in life. You have to figure out how to become discerning on your own. I chose to ignore this one.

I will readily admit that my methodology is complete bullshit but my results aren't.

Experiment at your own risk.


at EASTERN WASHINGTON 79, CAL STATE FULLERTON 75
11/30/2012

CAL STATE FULLERTON 3-3 (0-0) -- K. Vaughn 5-12 11-13 22; D. Seeley 8-16 2-3 21; S. Yeager 2-12 0-1 5; A. Harris 3-7 0-0 8; J. Brandon 1-9 0-0 2; D. Johnson 3-4 3-4 9; M. Horne 0-0 2-2 2; J. Douglas 2-3 2-2 6. Totals 24-63 20-25 75.
EASTERN WASHINGTON 2-5 (0-0) -- J. Crosgile 6-15 0-0 16; V. Jois 10-14 2-3 22; P. Kelly 3-6 4-4 12; T. Reuter 4-8 7-9 16; J. Forbes 1-6 5-6 7; K. Winford 1-6 1-2 3; M. Seiferth 1-1 1-5 3; J. Hickert 0-0 0-0 0; I. Dorsey 0-1 0-0 0. Totals 26-57 20-29 79.

Three-point goals: CSF 7-22 (K. Vaughn 1-3; D. Seeley 3-7; A. Harris 2-4; S. Yeager 1-4; J. Douglas 0-1; J. Brandon 0-3), EWU 7-20 (J. Forbes 0-2; K. Winford 0-3; J. Crosgile 4-8; P. Kelly 2-4; T. Reuter 1-3); Rebounds: CSF 33 (S. Yeager 9), EWU 40 (V. Jois 13); Assists: CSF 13 (S. Yeager 4), EWU 16 (J. Crosgile 6); Total Fouls -- CSF 25, EWU 19; Fouled Out: CSF-M. Horne; EWU-None.