Eagles take down Portland State

After a loss to Eastern Washington University on Monday night, the Portland State men’s basketball team has now dropped 10 straight road games to start the season.

The Vikings never led in the game, but kept the score close until late in the second half. Junior forward Aaron Moore led the Vikings with 20 points and 10 rebounds, his fourth double-double of the season. Going into the game, the Eagles were in last place in the Big Sky Conference standings.

“We’re not doing as well as we wish we were doing,” head coach Tyler Geving said. “We’ve had a couple opportunities to win some games, but we didn’t. The good thing is there are still 11 league games left, and that’s a lot of basketball left to be played.”

Of those 11 games, seven are at home, where the Vikings have a 5-2 record. Although the season has not gone as well as Geving would have liked, Portland State will have a lot of opportunities to make a run in the second half of the season.

“We’ve dug ourselves a little bit of a hole,” Geving said. “Not to the point where we are panicking or anything, but we’ve got to dig ourselves out and start stringing some wins together.”

The Vikings’ remaining schedule includes a five-game homestand stretching from Feb. 14 to March 2, which could play a role in their postseason hopes. If the team is going to get back on track, however, it will have to start with consistency at both ends of the court.

“We go on spurts where we play well, and we go on spurts where we don’t play well,” Geving said. “When we play well, it looks good, and when we don’t play well, it doesn’t look very good. We need to become more consistent in our approach to every aspect of the game. We can do that.”

Their next opportunity comes tonight against the University of Montana. Tipoff is scheduled for 7:35 pm.