Junior Amy Patton scored a season-high 27 points on 11-of-12 shooting Saturday night, but NAU was undone by 20 first-half turnovers and hot shooting by Eastern Washington in the second half in a 74-56 loss.
The Lumberjacks dropped to 0-4 in the Big Sky and 5-11 overall, while the Eagles improved to 9-8 overall and 3-1 in conference play.
“We are just not playing good fundamental basketball,” NAU head coach Laurie Kelly said. “I was really happy to see Amy have a breakthrough game, but we need to play better team basketball as a whole. We got beat in transition the whole game, and Eastern took advantage.
"We were that great fundamental team a month ago, and I don’t know where we lost that. We’re searching for that NAU team that was so close to beating Nebraska and (having a) breakthrough to contend for a conference championship.”
The game started well for the Lumberjacks, as they prevented the Eagles from getting clean looks and had a 13-11 lead with 8:56 to play in the first half. The tide would turn from there, though, as Eastern Washington when on a 22-2 run over the ensuing seven-plus minutes, a stretch in which NAU committed nine turnovers and went 1 for 6 from the field. Down 33-15, the Lumberjacks closed the half with a basket by sophomore Trinidee Trice and a buzzer-beating 3-pointer by sophomore Amanda Frost to go into the break down 35-20.
NAU opened the second half on a 9-4 run to get within 10 points at 39-29 at the 16:49 mark. The Lumberjacks were done in by another huge run, however, as the visitors scored 15 consecutive points over the next three and a half minutes to open up a 54-30 lead. The Eastern Washington lead swelled to 30 points at 61-31 with 12:25 to play, and the Eagles maintained an advantage of more than 20 points for most of the second half before the final score settled at 74-56.
Patton had her best shooting night of the season, going for 27 points (18 in the second half) while missing just one shot and going 3 for 3 from 3-point range. She also led the team with seven rebounds and three steals and was the only Lumberjack in double figures. In the process, she passed Mindy Sherred to move into third place in NAU history in career scoring.
Frost finished with eight points, while junior Tyler Stephens-Jenkins totaled seven points, six rebounds and a team-high four assists.
The Eagles had four players in double figures and got a double-double of 10 points and 11 assists from senior Chene Cooper.
After tying a season worst with 20 first-half turnovers, NAU finished with 31 giveaways for the game while forcing 18 Eastern Washington turnovers. The Lumberjacks actually had a better first-half field-goal percentage than the Eagles (39 percent to 37 percent), but Eastern shot 59 percent in the second half to pull away. NAU held a 35-32 rebounding edge but was outscored 36-22 in the paint and 28-12 off turnovers.
