After two days off from practice and competition, the men’s basketball team was back on the court Monday in preparation for Thursday’s road game at Tennessee Tech.

Saturday was the first weekend the Panthers had off from competition since the Ohio Valley Competition began in December.

“It went good,” head coach Rick Samuels said after Monday’s practice. “I thought we had a good concentration level at practice.”

After defeating Austin Peay 70-73 Thursday in Lantz Arena, the team held practice Friday before taking the weekend off. To resume the intensity in the team from last week to Monday’s practice, Samuels ran a scatter practice.

“That made them really come back and concentrate,” Samuels said. “By scatter practice, I mean I threw a lot of new things at them.”

And after an intense workout to start the week, Samuels could sense the rest had done the team some good.

“The benefit we have is that most of the kids live close enough where they could go home, and I think several of them did,” Samuels said. “That can be rejuvenating in itself to go home. And the rest of them probably just relaxed and watched the football games.”

The rest and rejuvenation is over, however, and the Panthers will spend the next three days preparing for the OVC leader, Tech. Tennessee Tech holds a perfect 7-0 record after recently defeating Tennessee State 77-68 over the weekend.

“We’ll have a good, hard practice tomorrow,” Samuels said. “Tech changes defenses a bunch, so that’s what we’ve been concentrating on.

They’ll be able to concentrate with changes around us constantly.”

While the team’s effort and concentration throughout practice this week will be rigorous, the coaching staff wants to be sure not to take away from the rest that was given to them this weekend.

“We’re going to keep our practices within a reasonable time,” Samuels said. “We want to go hard, but we want to be able to have benefited from those extra days off and not wear them out between now and Thursday.”