HELENA, Mont. — Starting off a head coaching tenure can have its ups and downs, but coming away with a victory in the first game of the year is a nice way to begin.

For Chris Kemp, his first game as a head basketball coach at the collegiate level resulted in a 92-82 victory for Eastern Oregon over Montana Tech on Saturday, Oct. 23. After four years as an assistant with the program, Kemp is hoping this is a sign of future triumph for the Mountaineers.

“It just feels good to get the massive monkey off our back and get that first one,” Kemp said. “We have never won in the state of Montana since I have been here and I have been telling the guys for two months that everything is different this year and this is step one.”

Kemp has a deep group this year, which was evident in Saturday’s victory when nine different Mountaineers hit the floor. Eastern trailed at halftime and battled back and forth with the Orediggers, but a late run midway through the second propelled the team to victory.

“The guys just battled and stayed together for 40 minutes,” Kemp said. “It wasn’t always pretty, but they responded to every run and had different guys step up at different times.”

Kemp leaned heavily on redshirt-senior Max McCullough, who will be the team’s main source of offense this season. McCullough scored 38 points, shooting 8-14 from three-point range and 10-16 from the field.

The Mountaineers dropped the second game of the tournament 77-74 against Carroll on Oct. 24. McCullough led the way with 26 points, and new transfer Xavier Lovelace added a team-high 10 rebounds.

While Eastern is .500 on the year to start off, Kemp emphasized before the season that the non-conference schedule would be very difficult this year. As opposed to coming back to La Grande empty-handed, the first-year coach now has a major first win under his belt.