THE FRONT ROW with MARK NELKE: EWU doing its best to flush last season away

It was a question the Eastern Washington Eagles probably got tired of answering.

At the Big Sky Football Kickoff just outside Spokane in July, Eagles coach Aaron Best and two of his players received some form of the same question from pretty much each media member that stopped by their table in a ballroom at Northern Quest Hotel and Casino.

What the heck happened last year, and what are you going to do about it?

“It” was a 3-8 record in 2022, EWU’s first losing season since Paul Wulff posted a similar record in 2006, the second-to-last of his eight seasons in Cheney.

It was a blip in an otherwise terrific run by the Eagles over the last two decades — 12 trips to the FCS playoffs since 2004, including two appearances in the FCS championship game with a title game win in 2010.

But last year, some teams had their way with Eastern — including Idaho, which laid a 48-16 whipping on the Eags at the Kibbie Dome.

Saturday, Eastern (2-2, 1-0 Big Sky) gets its chance at payback when the Vandals (3-1, 1-0) roll into Cheney for a 1 p.m. kickoff — the most-anticipated meeting between the two teams since Idaho returned to the Big Sky in 2018.

SO HOW did the Eags handle being humbled last year?

“I think whatever you flush you still remember,” said seventh-year EWU coach Aaron Best, who has taken Eastern to the playoffs three times, including a championship game appearance in 2018. “At the end of the day, you don’t sweep something like that totally away. Those can be learning moments; those can be teachable moments.

“But yeah, you flush, but you remember. You can’t close your eyes and say that never happened. It happened. The big question for these guys was, what are we going to do about it?”

Best’s 100-level evaluation of what happened last year?

“We didn’t score enough points, and we didn’t stop enough people,” he said. “We weren’t dynamic enough on offense, and we didn’t stop anybody on defense.”

Said EWU senior defensive back Darrien Sampson, in July:

“I think guys just took it for granted that we were a great program and we win a lot of the years. And they thought they were just going to roll in and we were going to go out there and win. I just think guys know now that we have to go out there and give it our all.”

SO FAR, the Eagles appear to be the Eagles of old.

After opening with a hard-fought loss to North Dakota State in Minneapolis, Eastern probably should have won at Fresno State the following week, only to lose in overtime. Fresno then went into Tempe and handled Arizona State.

The last two weeks, EWU beat a ranked Southeastern Louisiana team at home, then won its Big Sky Conference opener last week at UC Davis.

Eastern’s quarterback this year, redshirt sophomore Kekoa Visperas, saw some action off the bench last season, including the Idaho game.

To compare him to QB Eric Barriere, the Walter Payton Award winner in his final season at Eastern in 2021, wouldn’t be quite fair, though both are dual-threat quarterbacks.

“He’s got playmaking abilities that allow us to be a better football team,” Best said of Visperas.

Sampson described last season as “different.”

“We got in a place where we were trying to find a lot of wins, and we didn’t get a lot of wins,” he said. “It (this season) was just trying to get back to our roots of being tough and physical and dominating every chance we get.

“Everybody wants to beat Eastern. We know every game, the team’s looking to beat us, and we’ve got to go out there and have the same mindset as them, and want to dominate.”

SINCE IDAHO returned to the FCS level from FBS in 2018, Best has been hesitant to call the EWU-Idaho game a “rivalry.” Paul Petrino, who coached the Vandals from 2013-21, said early on he considered Eastern a rival.

Best played at Eastern from 1996-99, and has been on the Eagle coaching staff since 2000. His first year in Cheney as a player was Idaho’s first year in FBS, after leaving the Big Sky.

“I said this 4-5 years ago when they got back in, some of that (rivalry stuff) takes time,” Best said. “I’ve heard the stories of the 80s and early 90s … I’ve heard some really good stories — ‘Man, I wish I could go back to the time machine and be a part of that.’

“You talk about fans, and players and coaches — there were some fireworks during games, after games, before games. I think you can have a civil rivalry now, and you can still be competitive on the field. There were some emotions that spilled over.”

Two years ago in Cheney, Eastern embarrassed Idaho 71-21, in what turned out to be Petrino’s final season in Moscow.

While EWU has been an FCS playoff regular, last year was Idaho’s first playoff appearance since “The Return.”

Since Eastern had a down year last year, Saturday’s matchup will be the first since the 1990s where both teams have legitimate playoff aspirations — EWU was 2-6, Idaho 5-3 heading into last year’s game in Moscow.

“I don’t want to turn it into a disrespect with any opponent,” Best said. “I think that’s where fans want to go when you have a rivalry — you’re supposed to hate or disrespect your opponent. That’s not what we’re going to take part in. As long as we’re both getting better, we have a better chance to enhance the rivalry.”

So is EWU vs. Idaho getting to the point of a rivalry?

“I think so,” Best said. “It’s still in the infant stages to where it was. When someone’s out of the league for 20-plus years, you can’t just hop back in and say, we’re going to do this seamlessly. It’ll get there. There’s some natural, ‘we want to get after each other.’”

Keep an eye on that as you watch the game on Saturday.

Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached at 208-664-8176, Ext. 2019, or via email at mnelke@cdapress.com. Follow him on Twitter @CdAPressSports.