The men’s basketball team got off to a slow start Thursday night against Tennessee Martin and could not recover as they dropped a key conference game 85-71.

The Panther’s offense shot an unimpressive 41 percent from the field and an ice-cold 4-for-18 from beyond the arch.

“They took us out of our offensive rhythm early by being physical,” Panther head coach Rick Samuels said in his post game interview on WHQQ 98.9 FM. “You really have to credit their defense.

“They got over our screens and we just stopped moving. There was just too much standing around.”

One main reason Eastern’s offense struggled was the early foul trouble Kyle Hill got into. The senior guard was sidelined much of the first half with three fouls before fouling out with 4:24 left in the game and the Panthers down by 14 points.

“We had to keep Kyle out of the game because of fouls,” Samuels said. “When you take him out, and Matt (Britton) and Henry (Domercant) are struggling, we’ll have trouble scoring.

“We can rotate our big men, but we can’t rotate our guards when everyone is out of sync. We just don’t have guys to take over a game offensively yet to replace those guys (Hill, Domercant and Britton).”

The Panthers also had a problem keeping the Skyhawks off the glass on both ends of the floor. In the first half alone, Tennessee Martin had 19 points from second chance opportunities.

Despite its first half struggles, Eastern was able to use a buzzer-beating three-point shot by Domercant (18 points) to go into the half down three points. That would be as close as the Panthers would come though as the Skyhawks scored the first six second-half points and never looked back.

“(Tennessee Martin) had trouble scoring tonight,” Samuels said. “But the second and third chance points really killed us.

“I had sensed this week that we had stopped going to the boards, Kyle especially. But with him in foul trouble, that took him out of his game.”

The Skyhawks had solid contributions from the inside-outside punches of Brian Foster (24 points) and Okechi Egbe (23 points), while getting 15 points and 13 rebounds from Hayden Prescott.

“I don’t know how you guard him,” Samuels said of Foster. “He bumps you every time he shoots, so he draws a lot of fouls. He really uses his body effectively.”

With the loss, the Panthers fall to second place in the Ohio Valley Conference behind Tennessee Tech. Eastern will have to put this loss behind them before Saturday when they will play Murray State on ESPN2.

“It’s character check time for us right now,” Samuels said. “We need to bounce back and address the problems we had tonight because Murray is going to be a tough challenge.”