Feb. 1, 2007

Final Stats

The Eastern Washington University women's basketball team dropped a 72-57 decision to hot-shooting Montana State on Thursday evening (Feb. 1). The Eagles did see a couple nice performances from Nicole Scott and Sydney Benson, as Scott scored 23 points, tied for the fourth-highest point total by an Eagle in 2006-07, and Benson had her fifth double-double in her last seven games.

"Nicole Scott played really well tonight," assistant coach Tom Webb said. "She has a very smooth shot and does not have a problem shooting from range."

Also scoring in double figures for Eastern (7-15, 2-7 BSC) was Phynique Allen, who finished with 10 points. Benson had a perfect 6-of-6 shooting performance from the free throw line tonight and contributed a game-high total of four assists. Joanna Chadd had four steals to lead all players in that category.

The Bobcats (9-11, 4-4 BSC) shot 46.9 percent on the night (23-of-49), their best shooting performance of 2006-07.

Montana State scored the first four points of the game and never looked back, only relinquishing its lead when Eastern tied the score, 8-8 and 11-11. The game was close for the most part, however, as the MSU advantage did not reach double figures until 3:42 had elapsed in the second half, 41-31.

"I don't know if our downfall was our shot selection tonight," Webb said. "A lot of the time, it was not the things that Montana State did to us on defense as much as it was the things we failed to do on offense.

"One of our pre-game goals tonight was to take care of the lanes and control defensive transition, and we did not do any of that in the first half. In the second half, we did a little bit better job, but still did not get the job done."

Eastern Washington next plays host to Montana at 2:05 p.m. on Saturday (Feb. 3). The Lady Griz improved to 19-2, 7-1 Big Sky, with a 77-57 win tonight at Portland State. In this week's USA Today/ESPN Top 25 Coaches Poll, Montana received the most votes of any team not included in the top 25.

"Montana has Mandy Morales, who is a very good player," Webb said. "We did a good job defending against her last time we played them and need to do that again on Saturday. We will need to defend better as a team on Saturday and, to achieve that, we will practice hard tomorrow to get ready for Montana."