CHENEY, Wash. — The Eastern Washington University men's basketball team won their 17th-straight game and clinched a share of the Big Sky Conference regular season title on Saturday afternoon at Reese Court in Cheney, beating the University of Northern Colorado, 89-77. The championship is Eastern's fifth since joining the conference in 1987.

Both teams found the net early in the first half before guard Steele Venters caught a spark, draining three-straight 3-pointers to push the Eastern lead to 12 with 11:50 to play.

From there, the EWU offense continued to score in bunches. In the next five minutes, the Eagle lead ballooned to 20, punctuated by a 3 from senior Angelo Allegri with 5:50 left, making it 43-23.

It was 51-33 into halftime as Allegri had 14 points on 5-of-7 shooting, including 4-of-5 from beyond the arc. Venters added 11 on 4-of-6 from the field (3-4 from 3).

The Bears found seams in the EWU defense early in the second as Dalton Knecht regained his touch, scoring 17 in the final 20 minutes after going 1-for-8 in the first. The Eagles held enough to keep the lead in double digits, however, as it never got closer than a 12-point margin.

Allegri finished the game with a double-double — his fifth as an Eagle — on 22 points and 11 rebounds, adding 4 assists. Venters finished with 14 while big man Ethan Price quietly racked up 19 points in 7-of-11 shooting, grabbing 6 boards. Tyreese Davis led the team with 9 assists, including two on crowd-energizing alley oops to Deon Stroud.

At 15-0 in conference, the Eagles are now tied with 1968-69 Weber State for the longest unbeaten streak to open conference play in Big Sky history. Their 17 consecutive overall wins remains first in NCAA Division I and are one away from tying the 1979-80 Weber State squad for most in Big Sky history (18). Saturday also marked their 16th-straight win at Reese Court, extending the program record which was previously 12.

The Eagles won the regular season Big Sky title in 1999-00, 2003-04, 2014-15 and 2019-20. The 1999-00 and 2014-15 teams shared the distinction with Montana but lost the tiebreaker for conference tournament seeding. They went on to win the tournament on Montana's home floor in 2015, earning a berth to the NCAA Tournament.

EWU is now 21-7 on the season overall (15-0 in Big Sky) while UNC dropped to 10-18 (5-11). The Eagles will hit the road next week for games at Weber State (Feb. 23; 6 p.m.) and Idaho State (Feb. 25; 6 p.m.) before returning to Reese Court to host 2nd-place Montana State on Monday, Feb. 27 at 6 p.m.
 

Lift that 🏆 #GoEags #LetItFly pic.twitter.com/U3v1t2v5vJ

— EWU Men's Basketball 🏀 (@EWUMBB) February 19, 2023

 

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