Feb. 16—Ninety seconds into Saturday's game at Reese Court, Cole Scherer got his hand in a passing lane, secured the basketball and dribbled the length of the court for a layup.
They were the only points scored by Scherer, Eastern Washington's true freshman guard, in the whole of the Eagles' 84-66 Big Sky Conference victory over Weber State, a romp that gave the Eagles their fourth consecutive win.
But it was a play that Dan Monson went out of his way to mention after the game as the EWU head coach discussed the team's improved defensive discipline.
"I was really impressed with Cole Scherer starting the game with three deflections, and a breakaway lay-in, just following the scout and doing his job," Monson said. "Those become contagious for the other players."
A lot has become contagious for the Eagles lately as they prepare for their final regular season road trip, which includes games at Sacramento State (9-16, 5-8 Big Sky) on Thursday and at Portland State (17-7, 11-2) on Saturday.
And with so many players seeing significant time on the floor, the various contagions — stingy defense, smart shot selection and efficient ball movement — have gone all the more viral for the Eagles (9-17, 7-6), who are playing their best basketball of the season just a couple of weeks before the Big Sky men's basketball tournament.
"The last two weeks they've got it figured out that if they do the little things, winning will take care of itself," Monson said after Saturday's game. "Right now we're buying into that. We're so much more individually disciplined, especially on the defensive end."
One reason for that is the play of Scherer, who has started the last five games after playing no more than 13 minutes in any of the Eagles' first 21 games.
Monson has employed nine unique starting lineups this season, and he said that the move to start Scherer has certainly diminished the minutes of grad senior Johnny Radford and redshirt senior Jojo Anderson. But it hasn't made them any less effective, Monson said.
"Now we've got a lot of guys that we trust, especially with Cole starting now," Monson said. "He's one who has added another (player) into the lineup, and Jojo and Johnny have lost some minutes. But they have embraced that, and they're playing better in their 15 minutes than they were when they were playing 20."
During Scherer's first three starts, Radford had his best three-game stretch shooting 3s — his specialty — making 9 of 14 from long range. In EWU's victory Thursday over Idaho State, Anderson came up one assist shy of his first-career double-double with 11 points and nine assists. The team's 22 assists that game set a new season high.
"That many assists are going to happen more often just because of the direction our team is going," Anderson said after the game.
Distributing minutes more evenly has also helped the Eagles' starting forwards, Kiree Huie and Alton Hamilton IV. Over the last five games, Huie is 33 of 50 from the floor (66%), raising his season shooting percentage to 56.3, third best in the Big Sky. Hamilton has made 28 of 48 shots (58%) over that same stretch.
"I think early in the year they weren't in as good of shape or were playing too many minutes, but they weren't going 8-for-10, 7-for-10, they were going 4-for-10 and 5-for-10," Monson said of Huie and Hamilton. "Now I think they have more pop. Fatigue is hard down there, getting banged on and staying on balance. I think the rotation has helped them."
The Eagles are still heavily reliant on redshirt senior guard Isaiah Moses, whose 17.3 points per game and 33.3 minutes per game each rank sixth in the Big Sky.
But aside from Moses, no other Eastern player is logging more than 27 minutes per game (the league's 25th ranked player by minutes is averaging 27.3 per game). And over the last couple weeks, that's translated into the Eagles' first four-game winning streak of the season.
"We know we've got guys coming in behind us who are going to do their job," Hamilton said. "I think everybody has embraced the mentality that if we do our job as long and as hard as we can, someone else is going to take our place and give us a rest."