Eastern Holds Own Against Cabrini

Samuel Vaughn takes a jump shot. Matt Wolek | The Waltonian

Eastern’s men’s basketball team is having a rough start to the season. As of right now the Eastern Eagles are 2-5. Four of the five losses have been very close games. The one game that was not close was against Baldwin Wallace University. Eastern lost that game by a score of 56-82. Other than that game all the games have been extremely close where the largest margin of victory was 6 points in a loss to Cabrini, a team that is ranked 20th in the nation.

Despite the loss Eastern was very impressive against Cabrini. The offense played very well scoring 85 points. Against Cabrini, Malcom Garrison impressively put up 25 points. Austin James also had an impressive game as he recorded a double-double. He had 13 points and 11 rebounds. Eastern had five different players scoring in double digits.

Perhaps what was most impressive about the game against Cabrini was how Eastern played in the second half. In the first half the Eagles shot 36 percent. In the second half the Eagles were shooting 58 percent. The Eagles also were very good from the free throw line. They had a free throw percentage of 73 percent, as they made 11 of 15 free throw attempts.

What caused them to lose the game might have been the number of times Cabrini was sent to line. Cabrini had 24 free throw attempts the whole game. In such a close game free throws can be the difference in winning or losing.

After the Cabrini game the Eagles won their next two games. However Eastern is now on a three game losing streak, as they lost their first two conference games of the season. Eastern is going to have to find ways to win close games if they want to make it to the conference tournament. Even though the Eagles are 2-5, they could easily be 5-2.