As the team charter bus cruised down the interstate last week on the way to Nashville for the conference tournament, the Panthers got an early taste of what it would take to be champions.

While players likely gazed out the windows with visions of Murray State’s Issaac Spencer and Austin Peay’s Trenton Hassell in their heads, assistant coach Troy Collier dusted off an old tape and popped it in the charter’s VCR.

The tape? Footage of the 1992 Panthers’ Mid-Continent Conference semi-final game against the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. A win in that game propelled the `92 Eastern squad to become the first and only team in school history to move on to the NCAA Tournament – until Saturday when the Panthers earned an automatic bid to the Big Dance by winning their first Ohio Valley Conference Tournament.

“I showed the semi-final game on the bus on the way down to Nashville and I said to coach (Rick) Samuels, `Coach, you know what? Over the last month or so, I don’t think we’ve been playing as good defense as we need to win a championship. How about we show them our semi-final game against Wisconsin-Green Bay and show them how hard and focused we were,” said Collier, who was a sophomore guard on the `92 championship team.

“We watched that game on the way down to the tournament and coach allowed me to put it on, and we watched a few minutes of it,” Collier said. “And I went back in the bus and talked to players about certain things, but the main thing I wanted them to see was how focused we were and how much of a team effort it was.”

Samuels said he wanted his team to see the tape to understand the defensive focus needed to win a championship.

“It’s a pretty good game to watch and we have a highlight tape from that year’s team and it’s called dreams can come true,” he said. “The idea is to show them what can happen, and this year’s team, most of them had already seen parts of that tape.

“But the natural comparisons, the semi-final loss one year and then playing them again in the semifinals the next year made the Green Bay tape a bit of a natural tape to watch,” Samuels said. “The only thing we pointed out was how focused our kids were on taking certain things away, and that’s the one thing we wanted them to carry into the game on Friday.”

The Panthers would take that kind of focus into their semifinal 97-71 win over Murray State and their 21-point come-from-behind 84-83 championship win over Austin Peay.

“It really is true – defense wins championships,” Collier said. “Yeah, we have some great scorers, but down the stretch in that championship game this year, we stopped them.

“We had some great defensive stands and if we would have just traded baskets with (Austin Peay), there was no way we would have caught up,” he said. “So defense does win championships and I wanted to show our players how hard they’d have to play, and they did that.”

Samuels said he saw great intensity in both the `92 and 2001 teams going into their respective conference tournaments.

“The comparison I can make is the intensity both of these teams had heading into the postseason tournament,” he said. “The `92 team, the huge hurdle was the semifinals with Wisconsin-Green Bay and our kids were focused and ready to play, and our kids were the same way this year.”

Collier said the two teams’ road to the Big Dance are very similar.

“There’s a lot of similarity in that road to the championship game, losing to Wisconsin-Green Bay the year before and then getting the matchup with them in the semifinal again and beating them,” he said. “Last year, we lost to Murray State in the semifinal and got a chance to come back again and beat them in the semifinal.

“And in the championship game, Austin Peay was a very similar team to the UIC team we played back then,” Collier said. “Both teams were very athletic at every position and better than us at a few spots, but still we felt if we stayed focused, stuck together and stuck to the schemes coach was talking about, we had a chance.”

Another similarity both championship teams share is the loss of a senior leader at the beginning of the season. The `92 team lost senior Rob McKinnis to a knee injury while the 2001 Panthers had to play without senior forward and leading rebounder Merve Joseph who also had to sit out with a knee injury.

“Rob McKinnis who was our emotional leader went down with a knee injury early in the year, and that made things difficult,” said assistant coach Steve Weemer, who was also a part of the `92 team, sitting out as a transfer from Eureka College. “It was almost the same thing this year with Merve .

“He had great potential, and you hate to see something like that happen, but obviously things happen for a reason and they’re out of your control,” he said. “There’s nothing we can do about it and we all just feel so bad for him.”

While the two teams do share many common traits, the tales of their two regulars seasons are distinctly different.

“On the `92 team, we started four seniors and a sophomore, and two of those seniors were fifth-year players, so it was a very veteran team,” Samuels said. “We hadn’t achieved expectations during the season.

“That team had injuries and disappointing performances, but I think this team definitely achieved its goals in the regular season,” he said. “As I reflect, you can’t be disappointed in this team’s regular season performance.”

While they had different regular season routes, both teams had similar talented, athletic players.

“With personnel, I think the two teams are similar in a lot of ways,” Collier said. “Steve Rowe was like a Kyle Hill, Dave Olson could shoot the ball similar to what Henry (Domercant) can do from the perimeter, although Henry can do some things off the dribble now better than anyone could do back then, and we had a four man in Barry Johnson who pretty much could do it all.”

After winning the conference tournament, the `92 team drew a 15 seed in the West Regional and had to face off against the nation’s No. 5 team in Bobby Knight’s Indiana.

“We weren’t very competitive, frankly,” Samuels said of his team’s 94-55 loss to the Hoosiers. “We could have played better, but we got in awe. We were walking off the floor and LSU is walking on the floor with Shaquille O’Neill to practice.

“So there were a lot of distracting factors,” he said. “But those factors could be evident this year.”

Weemer doesn’t anticipate those distractions having as great of an impact this time around?

“I think that year was the first time going (to the NCAA Tournament), and I think it was just overwhelming for everyone,” Weemer said. “It was such an accomplishment just to get there, but now we’re trying to explain to our guys this year, hey if we get a decent seed, we have expectations to win.

“Coach Samuels has been through it before and everyone on our staff has been through it before,” he said. “We know what to expect and not get overwhelmed by the atmosphere and all the media and everything. We’ll just stay focused and prepare to win a game.”

And Samuels believes this year’s team has better chances of winning that first round game than the `92 team did.

“We have a different makeup, and I don’t mean that psychologically,” Samuels said. “I think the `92 team was a tough group of kids with pretty good chemistry, but the reason I think this team is different is that the way we play is different. I think we’re a team that will be harder to play against.”

The reason the 2001 Panthers are harder to play against is because the adjustments Samuels has made in the team’s offensive and defensive systems over the last nine years.

“It has a lot to do with our system,” he said. “Our system, in my mind, is really quite different when teams get on the floor to play us than what they usually see on a game-by-game basis.

“We’re a more effective jump shooting team than the team was in `92, especially when it comes to range,” Samuels said. “That bodes well for us because sometimes if you’re a team at our level, and you’ve gotten there because you’re an inside scoring team, you’re matchups aren’t effective.”

“The flexibility of our motion offense gives our players the ability to use their talents,” Collier said. “It allows them to reach their full potential, and back in `92 it was more of a structured offense compared to what this team does.”

Like Samuels, Collier believes this year’s team has better chances of pulling a Cinderella upset than the squad he played on nine years ago.

“Yes, I really do think they have better chances,” he said of this year’s team. “Back then we were just happy to get there, and I think we’re happy to be there too now, but I think that there’s a chance we can be competitive. I think our kids are more confident that we can go and be more competitive than we were (in `92).”

Win or lose, Weemer and Collier are just glad their players will have the opportunity to experience what they did when they donned the gray and blue.

“I definitely had some memories coming back, and just the fact of the excitement and how the support of the community gets involved, and you come back and see Lantz Gym full again…It reminds me of the pep rally we had in `92, and it’s just so exciting,” Weemer said. “More importantly, I’m proud of our kids. To experience something like this is a once in a lifetime thing, and I’m just so proud they can experience something like that.

“I told our players, `You know what? Enjoy this experience. I want you to enjoy it all because it may not happen again in your career,'” Collier said. “I’m hopeful it can happen again, but enjoy it.

For Collier, enjoying this experience will mean putting away the old `92 game tapes away for good.

“Back then when we went, we enjoyed it, and I cherish it everyday and one of the fondest times I’ve ever had in my athletic career was that experience,” he said. “I’m glad they have their own stories, and I’m glad they don’t have to listen to my `92 stories all the time.

“I’m glad they won’t have to watch the `92 tape any more,” Collier said. “Now we can watch the 2001 tape.”