CHENEY, Wash. —  The UC Santa Barbara Women's Basketball team (7-4, 1-1 Big West) heads north for their final non-conference action of the season and their last game before the calendar flips to 2025, visiting Eastern Washington (3-8, 0-0 Big Sky) on Friday. It will be a first-ever visit to Cheney for the Gauchos, who have not met the Eagles since hosting them in December of 1993.
 
With a win, Santa Barbara would head into the new year with an 8-4 record for the third season in a row (and a .750 winning percentage for the fourth straight season), but there is a much more significant milestone in reach on Friday as well. Alyssa Marin is closing in on the 1,000^th point of her career and would become the 27^th woman to score a thousand for Santa Barbara with just 13 points.
 
LAST TIME OUT
The Gauchos got back in the win column on Sunday afternoon, taking down Pacific, 63-50, in the Thunderdome. Skylar Burke made a triumphant return to lead all scorers with 18 points off the bench after missing out on the UC Davis game on Dec. 7. Olivia Bradley also made her return to the court, playing her first minutes in nearly a calendar year on Sunday. She made a field goal and a free throw in an energetic 10 minutes of action. Alyssa Marin was up to her usual tricks against the Tigers, stepping to the free-throw line 12 times and making 11 as part of a 16-point performance, her 10^th straight double-digit haul. The fifth-year guard from Camarillo is now 13 points away from the 1,000^th of her career and is averaging a Big West leading 17.9 per game so far this season.
 
SCOUTING THE EAGLES
Eastern Washington (3-8, 0-0 Big Sky) snapped a three-game losing streak on Monday night, earning a confidence-boosting 98-45 win over NAIA institution Warner Pacific, with six different Eagles scoring in double digits. It has been a rough year so far for the defending Big Sky Champions, who already have two more losses through 11 games than they did all of last season. Some of this year's defeats have been blowouts, including an 83-59 defeat at Washington and a 74-47 loss at home to North Dakota State, while others have been heartbreakingly close. They were four seconds away from defeating Washington State on the road on opening night, falling by an 83-82 score in overtime, and they came up two points short of a comeback against Saint Mary's in Hawaii on Thanksgiving weekend, 59-57.
 
The common thread in all nine of Eastern Washington's games against Division I opponents this season has been Peyton Howard leading the offense. The graduate guard is the Eagles' top scorer, averaging 15.5 points per game this season, having scored 20 or more on three occasions and double digits in all but one of Eastern Washington's 11 games. She comes into Friday's game shooting 44.4 percent from the floor and averaging just over three assists a game.
 
Howard is also a pretty effective rebounder, averaging three a game, but then, so are most of her teammates. The Eagles are one of the Big Sky's best teams on the boards, and lead the conference with 13.8 offensive rebounds a game. The freshman duo of Kourtney Grossman and Jacey Eggers lead the squad, averaging 6.2 and 5.1 boards a game respectively, with Grossman owning the team's single best rebounding performance of the year. She pulled down 14 boards against South Dakota State earlier this month.
 
FOLLOW ALONG
The Gauchos and Eagles will tip off at 6 p.m. from Reese Court in Cheney, Washington. Fans not planning to trek north and brave the cold can catch all the action live on ESPN+ and follow along with live stats at ucsbgauchos.com.