They're back, and they look a little angry. Make that hungry.

The Eastern Washington Eagles, runners-up in the last three Big Sky Conference basketball tournaments, barged back into the championship game with a convincing 72-53 victory over Weber State in front of a raucous crowd of 4,247 Tuesday, the fourth-largest gathering ever at Reese Court.

"We've been through so much the last three years, losing in the conference championship," said senior guard Alvin Snow, who finished with 18 points. "That's hard, man. Our guys know that opportunities are few and far between. Our guys are extremely focused to try to get this done. For guys like myself, the seniors, we don't have any more opportunities."

EWU had a 10-day break between its regular-season finale and Tuesday's semifinal, but it looked refreshed, not sluggish. The Eagles scored the first seven points, yielded a field goal, then ripped off the next seven. The Wildcats burned two early timeouts, but couldn't stem EWU's momentum.

The Eagles shot 66.7 percent in the first half, played adhesive man-to-man defense and made the Wildcats pay for every mistake they made. It was 40-22 at halftime and the student section, on their feet the entire first half, needed the break to recharge their lungs.

"We needed to get off to a good start and the guys did a great job defensively to help us do that," said EWU fourth-year coach Ray Giacoletti. "You watch teams come out and the ones who are the aggressors usually are the ones that can sustain it for 40 minutes."

And now the top-seeded Eagles are back in familiar territory, playing in the title game. They'd like to go somewhere they've never been -- the NCAA Tournament. EWU (16-12), which joined Division I in 1983 and the Big Sky in 1987, will play No. 2 Northern Arizona (15-13) at 6:05 p.m. for the Big Sky's automatic berth into the NCAA Tournament. ESPN2 will televise the game.

NAU, which last won the Big Sky tournament in 2000, handled No. 3 Idaho State 91-72. EWU won both regular-season games against the Lumberjacks.

Idaho State finished 13-18. No. 5 Weber State, which suffered its second-most lopsided defeat of the season on coach Joe Cravens' 50th birthday, ended 15-14.

Junior forward Marc Axton led EWU's early burst. He made all six of his shot attempts, including a pair of 3-pointers, to finish with 14 first-half points.

The Eagles repeatedly found creases in Weber State's defense, which led to 26 points in the paint by intermission. A good share of those came on backdoor cuts, like the one Axton scored on a nice feed from Danny Pariseau that gave EWU a 30-14 lead.

EWU went on another burst late in the half with seven unanswered points that Brendon Merritt capped with a nifty spin move in the lane to hike the Eagles' lead to 19.

"We just got it going right away," said Axton, who finished with 21 points. "It just felt good and the crowd was into it."

Weber State went to a zone defense in the second half and temporarily slowed the Eagles. Senior forward Slobodan Ocokoljic, after an ineffective first half, scored 14 of his 18 points in the second half as the Wildcats pulled as close as 12.

The Eagles often answered from the perimeter. Pariseau's 18-footer restored EWU's lead to 14. Less than a minute later, Axton's 3-pointer from the top of the key bumped EWU on top 51-36.

Snow's two 3-pointers helped the Eagles stretch their lead to 17.

"I thought (EWU) played terrific," Cravens said. "I thought the energy they came out with. . . . I was very apprehensive about that. They took us out of everything we wanted to run and we missed three point-blank shots there in the first half."

EWU turned one of those misses, Patrick Danley's clank on an uncontested layup, into a Snow jumper at the other end.

Ocokoljic and 6-foot-10 center Lance Allred combined for just eight points on 2-of-10 shooting in the first half.

"You probably have go back three, four weekends when we've had that much defensive intensity," Giacoletti said. "As a coach, I'm extremely pleased, but I'm just trying to reinforce this is a two-step process."

EWU tries to take that second -- and longest -- step tonight.

"It's going to be an incredible (atmosphere)," Snow said. " (Tuesday night) was great, but I think tomorrow is going to be even better. I can't remember a time when the excitement around campus was this high. It's incredible right now, but within (the team) we just need to stay focused. We need to get done what we need to do."

Eastern Wash. 72, Weber State 53Eastern Washington (16-12) -- Axton 8-10 2-2 21, Snow 7-17 2-2 18, M.Nelson 4-4 1-2 9, Merritt 3-8 0-0 7, Pariseau 3-5 2-2 9, Henkel 0-0 0-0 0, McCulloch 0-0 0-0 0, Wortham 0-0 0-0 0, Barnard 1-2 0-0 2, Butorac 1-1 2-4 4, Smith 1-1 0-0 2, Nicholas 0-1 0-0 0. Totals 28-49 9-12 72.

Weber State (15-14)_Jackson 0-0 0-0 0, Sparrow 6-12 6-6 20, Allred 1-7 2-2 4, Jenkins 0-1 0-0 0, Hamilton 3-7 4-4 11, Emadi 0-0 0-0 0, Ocokoljic 5-11 8-11 18, Cox 0-0 0-0 0, Goodell 0-1 0-0 0, Niparavicius 0-0 0-0 0, J.P.Nelson 0-0 0-0 0, Franklyn 0-0 0-0 0, Danley 0-2 0-0 0, Davis 0-0 0-0 0. Totals 15-41 20-23 53.

Halftime_Eastern Washington 40, Weber State 22. 3-point goals_Eastern Washington 7-14 (Axton 3-3, Snow 2-6, Pariseau 1-1, Merritt 1-3, Barnard 0-1), Weber State 3-12 (Sparrow 2-5, Hamilton 1-3, Jenkins 0-1, Ocokoljic 0-3). Fouled out_None. Rebounds_Eastern Washington 30 (Merritt 8), Weber State 20 (Goodell 4). Assists_Eastern Washington 15 (Merritt 6), Weber State 6 (Davis 2). Total fouls_Eastern Washington 19, Weber State 16. A_4,247.