Box Score Central Washington University's men's basketball team picked up its 10th win of the season with an 86-66 victory over visiting Northwest Nazarene on Saturday at Nicholson Pavilion.

With the victory, the Wildcats improve to 10-8 on the 2013-2014 campaign and 6-4 in Great Northwest Athletic Conference play.

The Wildcats – who never trailed in the game – poured it on early and often against NNU. JB Pillard (Juanita HS), MARK MCLAUGHLIN (Bothell HS) and KEVIN DAVIS (Beamer HS) all got into the offensive action with multiple buckets early on in the contest. Davis and Pillard scored on consecutive possessions and McLaughlin hit the first of four perimeter shots on the night to quickly push CWU to a 7-2 advantage with less than three minutes off the clock.

Up 17-8 midway through the first half, JEFF BUDINICH (Kentlake HS) found his groove with a 3-pointer to push the lead to 12. One minute later, the 6-foot-10-inch forward again hit from long range and then JALEN PEAKE (West Valley, Yakima HS) sank another 3-ball for the 26-14 lead.

CWU would eventually extend the lead to 17 (36-19) after McLaughlin scored another 3-point field goal with less than eight minutes left in the half and went into halftime up by nine after Northwest Nazarene cut into the deficit before halftime.

The Wildcats however, never gave NNU a chance to build on that momentum as CWU quickly pushed the lead back to double digits with McLaughlin hitting another trifecta for the 50-38 cushion with 17:59 to play in the game. NNU cut the disadvantage to eight once again at the 14:07 mark, but Pillard quickly scored on the other end and the Wildcats never led by less than 10 for the rest of the game.

The 'Cats earned their largest lead of the game with Peake scored another 3-pointer for the 24-point, 80-56 advantage.

McLaughlin – the nation's leading scorer with a 28.3 points-per-game average – scored 29 on 11-for-18 (61 percent) shooting. Pillard finished with 14 points and five rebounds. Both Peake and Budinich scored 11 points apiece.

As a team, the Wildcats were on fire, shooting nearly 60 percent for the game (59.6 percent) and also hit 82.4 percent of their free throws, while holding the Crusaders to just 40 percent from the field.

Mario Donaldson (21 points) and Michael Loomis (20 points) led the Crusaders (5-13, 3-7).

Central Washington travels to Western Oregon next Thursday evening.