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USU Eastern’s Golden Eagles entered the Scenic West Athletic Conference conference tour-nament as the number-two seed. Even though Coach Brad Barton and his team were predicted to win the tournament, they lost their first game, eliminating them from play. However, many of Eastern players will move on to D-1 universities, or return to play for the Eagles for another promising year.

The Eagles lost their final game of the season to Salt Lake Community College 86-72 in the quarterfinals of the SWAC tournament. Barton said, “We had a tough game and didn’t catch many breaks.” However, several players had a good season-ending game. Maxim Zakharov led the team in with 28 points and six rebounds and played all 40 minutes. Jonathan Mills followed with 13 points and 19 rebounds. Bryant Crowder also played well scoring nine points and bringing down seven rebounds.

The Eagles faced a few obstacles that the Bruins did not have to worry about. James Kinney played the first half in a UFC sparring helmet to protect his broken jaw. Kinney said, “It was tough and hot playing in the helmet, b u t it was tougher playing with my jaw wired shut. It was hard

to breath.” Trevor Bamgartner also played 23 minutes with an injured foot. With both starting guards injured, the team had a rough time running offense. “It’s tough to win games when both starting guards are not 100 percent,” said Barton.

On a more positive note, Mills signed with Chicago

State University and received first team all-conference. Trevor

Bamgartner and James Kinney received second team all-confer-ence. Kinney also has several D- I

offers. “I have a few schools talking to me, but still haven’t

taken any official visits or signed with anyone.” Brady Hurst and Maxim Zakharov both

received honorable mentions. Hurst was offered a full-ride scholarship to BYU Hawaii, along with Cameron Evans. Hurst said “I don’t really care that it is a D-2 school … it

feels right and I’ll be in Hawaii for two years.” Aaron Hawk Harris signed with Northern Colorado University, where he will play for former CEU Head Coach Chris Craig. Bryant Crowder has signed with Southern Mississippi University.

Coach Barton looks forward to hopefully having an-other successful year with a few new faces on the team and a couple returning athletes. He said, “It will be tough to replace the four solid bigs we are losing, but both Neveij Walters and Maxim Zakharov are returning and they are both first-class athletes.”

Chase Flint is also returning after he attended in 2008-2009. Flint returns as a freshman because he was a medical redshirt with a broken elbow his first year, Coach Barton said, “Chase is a hard worker and one of the best people I know.”

Overall the Golden Eagles had a successful season go-ing 23-8. He said, “Overall our guys played well and I’m definitely proud of how they played and the season we had.” With it being coach Barton’s first season as a collegiate head coach, his results were well above expectations as the Eagles finished 10-5 with the second-best record in the conference.

The SWAC boasts the two first place NJCAA winners: CSI for the men and North Idaho for the women.

March 24, 2011

March may be one of my favor-ite times of the year. The weather is getting warmer which means golfing, there is a playoff race in the National Basketball Associa-tion, and it is time for the college basketball tournament. With the college basketball tournament we get what has been dubbed “March Madness.” It is the time of the year when you either win or go home. If you lose there are no more games, the season is over and you can start cleaning out your locker. However if you win then you keep playing, with that being the case there is always bound to be an upset.

The same teams seem to win year after year, which makes it all that much easier to cheer for the teams that never seem to go all the way, the team that shouldn’t win because they aren’t tall enough, fast enough or strong enough. The team that is the David in a “David versus Goliath fight” just because they are unknown and have never been in this position before.

Everybody knows of teams like the University of North Carolina Tar Heels, the Duke Blue Devils, the University of Kansas Jayhawks and finally the University of Ken-tucky Wildcats. There are other teams that have dynasties in the world of college basketball, but most people seem to be in the same boat as me which is that they want the underdog teams to win and cre-ate waves in the brackets and create lots of talk amongst the analysts.

In recent years there have been many different underdog teams that have upset brackets. In the 2010 Tournament, the bracket busters were the Butler Bulldogs, they seem to be doing the same thing this year. Since 2006, the George Mason Patriots have been regular at upsetting higher-ranked teams. Even though they continue to make it to the tournament, they never have a higher enough seed to be considered a threat to anyone and continue to be overlooked.

Of course the 2011 tourna-ment has been no different with plenty of upsets to go around. Butler continues their streak from last year, and have already knocked out a number-one seed which was Pittsburgh. There have definitely been other bracket busters this year. The University of Richmond has already beat Vanderbilt and More-head State to punch their ticket to the Sweet Sixteen. Marquette also made some ripples in the brackets. Not only do they have stylish jer-seys, but on top of that, they know how to beat bigger and stronger teams with big-game experience. Although the Cinderella team that is catching all of the attention is the Virginia Commonwealth University Rams. The Rams have only won one game in the National Tournaments before. This year they have already won three. The Rams started the tournament as one of the first four teams in and had to beat the University of Southern California just to make it into the bracket.

As the madness and the tourna-ment continue this year and in years to come, here is to the underdogs and the upsets they cause. They make watching college basketball worthwhile; after all they do the unexpected and keep everybody guessing as to what might hap-pen next.

This is why underdogs during March Madness have been Next on the Tee.

David Osborne Jr.sports editor

d.osborne@eagle.ceu.edu

If you have not heard, Brigham Young Univer-sity is in the Sweet 16. I’m sure I didn’t need to tell you, I’m sure the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint member-ship has been updating you with every half of ball. With Jimmer leading the way, their season quickly became the “hot topic” in Utah.

I am not from Utah and honestly can say I hate BYU. I’ve been told I need to cheer for BYU though because I live in Utah...won’t happen. Why is this expected?

I promise there are people who have been born and raised in Utah and won’t cheer for the Cougars. They are the Utah Ute fans. Is it expected for them to cheer for another Utah team, although they are rivals? So this got me thinking, if you live somewhere, do you have to root for the team in your state,

no matter what?Before I begin, let me tell you some of my

opinions about BYU. I like the Jimmer story and think he is a good college basketball player, but if I shot 50 times a game, I think I could have 40 points a game. Not to men-tion having him go to the NBA, can you say bust? When you have the games they had to get into the Sweet 16, it’s not to impressive.

We will see how they do when they play a team that knows what defense is and who has more than 2,000 students enrolled. But that is not here, nor there. Sorry BYU fans.

Back to the point of the article. When I hear BYU fans telling Utah fans they need to cheer for them because they live in the same state, I just shake my head. Come on guys, that’s like saying the Yankees and the Red Sox are in the AL East so cheer for one of them. You can’t cheer for those two teams just because they are in the same division.

A better example for me is telling you if Oregon State was in the national champion-ship, I would cheer for them, if you know me you know that it will never happen. The only Oregon team in my heart is the Ducks.

If people want to make this rule about the same state cheering, then why doesn’t the baseball team and the scream team drive

to SLCC next year when they have games? Maybe that can bring the baseball team and the Scream Team closer.

Being an opinionated writer, I’ve found a lot of people don’t share my same views. They complain about my opinion, and I know tons of people will disagree with me on this one. They’ll say the only reason I wrote this is because I don’t like BYU, or because I just want to stir up commotion. Which I hope to do.

But before you say that just think BYU fans, if Utah was in and BYU was out, who would you be wanting to win? I bet 90 per-cent of you would love to see the Utes get beat. There are tons of factors that go into cheering for your team; family members, location, friends, where you go to school, etc.

But the most important thing that makes your choice, is your heart, not where you live. GO VCU!

How faithful should Utah fans be to sports?Trenton Kinney

staff writer t.kinney@eagle.ceu.edu

Kris Sanford and Jordan Cunningham

staff writers k.sanford@eagle.ceu.edu

CEUMarch

Madness underdogs

Congratulations to the

College of Southern Idaho men’s basketball team

for winning the NJCAA tournament

March 19 in Hutchinson, Kansas

CSI defeated Redlands 77-65CSI defeated Tallahassee CC 77-65

CSI defeated Midland College 72-64CSI’s Pierre Jackson MVP

CSI’s Steve Gosar, Coach of the TourneySeason record: 32-4

Katie James Bigelowsports writer

k.james@eagle.ceu.edu

Lady Eagles have successful season

Congratulations to the

College of North Idaho women’s basketball team

for winning the NJCAA tournament

March 19 in Salina, Kansas

NIC defeated Georgia Perimeter 78-48NIC defeated State Fair 66-38CSI defeated Pensacola 90-75

NIC beat No. 3 Trinity Valley Community College of Texas in the championship

game 90-81Season record: 32-3

who?Missed free throws/threes

at SWAC: a team who could’ve, would’ve, should’ve

Region 18 of the NJCAA Division-1 Scenic West Conference had a battle of games over weekend of March 3-5th. On March 3, Utah State University Eastern Lady Eagles put up an incredible fight with the Snow College Badgers. The see-saw game ended with the Lady Eagles’ down 63-59.

Head Coach, Dave Paur said, “It was disappointing, I thought we were going to win. If anyone wanted to see a good basketball game, it was the game to watch.” The lead score was constantly changing possession. By halftime the Eagles led by five. “We were ahead by five at the half. Threes can break a team and they hit a few. The l e a d

changed seven times in the last 10 minutes so it was a great game. Anybody could have won it,” said Paur.

Defense Coordinator, Dan Allen, said, “Our defense was solid through most of the game with the exception of the last few minutes. I thought that we got tired and missed some key shots when the game was on the line.”

Paur said, “They hit a couple and we hit a couple. We had the last posses-sion and didn’t hit our shots. We truly thought we could win and didn’t.” With 15-seconds left on the clock, the Eagles had the possession. Coach Paur called a time out and Offensive Coordinator, Adjalma Becheli, [Coach Vando] put in a special play. It came to crunch time. A

missed shot allowed

Snow to get the rebound. In attempt to get the ball, the Eagles fouled. Snow went down and made two-foul shots putting them up by five in the last few seconds.

“We held Snow to 63 points, which was well below their average, but we did not stop them at the end of the game. The energy level that cost us on defense also hurt our offense in the second half,” said Allen.

Paur added, “The next night, Snow went out and almost won in the last few seconds against Salt Lake Com-munity College but lost with a couple of seconds left.”

The Region 18 Champion was North Idaho. “I think that North Idaho was the

best team in our league, so I was pleased to have them win the

tournament and represent us at the nationals,” said

Paur.

photo courtesy of Jessa Love Adams/The Eagle

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#21 Bryant Crowder goes up for a shot against Salt Lake Community College during the SWAC tournament in Twin Falls, Idaho.

photo courtesy of Scott Fredrick