Twins of ‘07 tourney back as tweens

The last time twin brothers Owen and Evan Eaton were in Nationwide Arena in Columbus, they were just five months old.

They were with their father, an associate head basketball coach at the University of Albany, which qualified for the NCAA men’s basketball tournament in 2007 and was playing a first-round game at Nationwide Arena against the University of Virginia.

Now 12, Owen claimed to remember the experience, until his mother, Alexis Eaton, reminded him that he was in diapers at the time.

“I remember seeing a picture of it,” he clarified, referring to a photograph published in The Dispatch at the time.

Their father, Eric Eaton, is back in the tournament this year, now as an assistant coach at Iona University, located in New Rochelle, New York, just north of New York City. Iona faced the Midwest Regional’s top seed, the University of North Carolina, on Friday night.

They go to “local games sometimes, depending on school and work. But when they go to the tournament, we let them get out of school,” Eric said of his sons.

He described Friday night’s game as a “once-ina-lifetime” experience for his family, although Iona made the tournament last year.

The Eatons are a basketball family. The twins play for a traveling team made up of middle school students from southern Connecticut, where they live. They’re coached by their mother, who played college basketball at Assumption College in Worcester, Massachusetts.

Alexis said she’s always coached her sons. In fact, the first place the couple brought the boys after they were born was the basketball arena at Albany.

“We didn’t even go home; we brought them straight to the court,” she said.

Being a college coach while raising twin boys is difficult, Eric said.

“The job is a job where you travel a lot, so you have to be away from them a lot,” he said.

But the couple bring their children on the road every chance they get. The boys talked about visiting locations as varied as Las Vegas and the Bahamas.

The family spoke fondly of their last visit to Columbus, saying the fans were great and the people were friendly, and that they looked forward to playing in central Ohio again.

Owen said he has an Iona jersey, shirt and pants that he wears every game to bring his father’s team good luck.

The boys and their mom are often the loudest fans in the stands.

“She screams a lot,” Evan said of his mother.

[ADAM CAIRNS/DISPATCH] Eric Eaton, now an Iona assistant coach, has returned to the NCAA Tournament and Nationwide Arena with his wife, Alexis, and twin sons, Owen, left, and Evan.

[DISPATCH FILE PHOTO] Twins Owen, left, and Evan Eaton were 5 months old when they were first at Nationwide Arena for NCAA basketball action in 2007. Here they were hanging out while their dad helped run a practice for the University of Albany.