Box Score MONMOUTH, Ore. (Jan 30) – After a hot shooting start, the Central Washington University men's basketball team fell to fourth-ranked Western Oregon University 85-68 Saturday afternoon at the New PE Building on the WOU campus.
 
The Wildcats now stand with an 11-5 record, with a 6-5 mark in the Great Northwest Athletic Conference.  Western Oregon avenged their only NCAA Division II loss to improve to 18-2, 11-1 in the GNAC.
 
Gary Jacobs led the Wildcats with 17 points on 6 of 9 shooting, with 11 of his tallies coming in the first half.  Devin Matthews was the only other Wildcat to scoring in double figures, adding 13 points, six rebounds and three assists.
 
The Wildcats opened the game making nearly 60 percent of their shots, but fell into a dry spell for the final 30 minutes of the contests, finishing with a shooting percentage of 35.6. 
 
"We stayed spaced out to start the game, got paint touches, and got to the rim," CWU Head Coach Greg Sparling said.  "We had a lot of good looks that didn't fall as the game went on, and then we got away from our offense the rest of the way.  Credit to Western Oregon though, they had this game circled on their calendar and came ready to play."
 
Western Oregon on the other hand shot 57.9 percent from the field with more than half of their points coming in the paint (46).
 
"They [WOU] have a lot of shooters and with the way they were knocking down shots it opened up scores down low," Sparling added.  "I thought we played hard defensively, they just executed better than we did tonight."
 
A bulk of the WOU inside scoring came from Andi Avgi who scored 27 points, making 11 of 19 shots.  Avgi was one of five Wolves to score in double figures in the contest.
 
Jacobs got the Wildcat offense going early scoring seven of the team's first 12 points, including the first five.  With 15:04 left in the first half CWU held a slight 12-10 lead.
 
Western Oregon took its first lead of the ball game at 13-12, but Jacobs answered right back with a fast break layup that sparked a 6-0 run that was highlighted by an alleyoop lay in by Jacobs and a basket by Devin Matthews.
 
The next five minutes of basketball saw a scoring drought by both teams with CWU holding a 22-20 at the under eight media timeout.
 
Western Oregon got a big boost from all-American Andi Avgi who led a 9-0 run to take a 29-22 lead.  Devin Matthews ended a CWU scoring drought that lasted nearly six minutes, knocking down a three pointer to end the WOU run.  The Wolves continued to add to their lead, taking a 38-29 halftime advantage into intermission.
 
Western Oregon controlled the second half scoring the majority of its points coming in the paint and led by as many as 29 points in the stanza. 
 
Central Washington will have a quick turnaround when they host Northwest Nazarene next Tuesday, Feb. 2, at 7 p.m. in Nicholson Pavilion.