CHENEY, Wash. — This Saturday marks the final game of the season for the Eastern Washington Eagles, as they hope to finish not only on a three-game winning streak, but at a .500 mark in the Big Sky Conference.
"It's huge," Offensive Lineman Wyatt Hansen said. "I mean, like we've been set and trying to reset the culture, and just show that the things that we've been doing and offseason work, the hard work we put in all winter, [and] being able to come out and finally putting it together and see what clicks on the field."
Eastern is coming off a record-setting performance against Idaho State last week, and hoping to not only keep the ball rolling against Northern Arizona, but knock off their second-ranked opponent of the season.
"Anytime you put together a winning streak, that's exciting," Head Coach Aaron Best said. "You know, we've learned how to win back-to-back games. This year with this team, we haven't won back to back to back games. We got [an] opportunity to do that against a really, really, really good opponent at their home field, and they're playing for their playoff lives, and so we're going to have to be at our best to give ourselves a chance because they will be at their best."
This Eastern group will lose a number of seniors, including their entire offensive line, and they look back on their time and Genie with a lot of fond memories.
"From a leadership perspective, all the guys that are leaving [are] just setting a tone for what it needs to be in the future," Defensive End Brock Harrison said. "You know, we're not going to be here to make all the decisions that we did. It's the rest of the team's turn to try something new, figure out what works for them, and that's what we've been trying to do [for the] last three years. And yeah, it hasn't exactly [been] working out for us. But, I mean, we've tried everything under the sun, and that's the thing I wasn't going to have, we were never going to stop trying."
"Going into the latter part of the gauntlet with three ranked teams behind, behind against SAC, we battled every step of the way home and away, so proud of these guys," Best said. "They battled game in, game out, series in series out hadn't gone their way, but they haven't flinched in the process."
Eastern and Northern Arizona from the Walkup Skydome down in Flagstaff on Saturday, they'll kick it off at noon.