While the temptation to look forward to returning all but one player next season is great, the men’s basketball team still has two games left on the regular-season schedule before trying to make some noise in the Ohio Valley Conference Tournament next week.

“There is a reason to anticipate next year, because we’re only losing one player,” head coach Rick Samuels said. “But there’s not a reason to think this team can’t recover and be a factor in the post season tournament.”

Eastern (14-14, 6-8) is looking to recover from losing seven of its nine games as the Panthers return to Lantz Arena to host Tennessee State (11-15, 7-8) Thursday night and conference leader Tennessee Tech (21-5, 14-1) Saturday night.

“The key part, even though we’ve been losing, is to keep our heads up and just focus on the next game on the schedule and try to win,” junior forward Henry Domercant said. “We need need to give our best effort – don’t save anything.”

The Panthers must win both of its remaining games to have any chance of hosting a first-round playoff game Tuesday. Having three games in their final week of regular season play isn’t fairing well for the Panthers.

“If we were on a big winning role, the schedule would look great,” Samuels said. “But the fact that we’ve been out struggling, the schedule’s not real good to us in the sense we had two long trips back-to-back.”

Eastern’s losing streak began Jan. 31 with a 97-92 loss at Tennessee Tech, which was followed by losses at Tennessee State and Eastern Kentucky. Those losses were followed by two narrow losses at home against Murray State (77-76) and Tennessee-Martin (68-62). Monday night wasn’t any easier on Eastern, suffering a 102-87 loss to one of the league’s bottom-feeder, Southeast Missouri.

“The fact that we’ve been coming up just a little bit short begins to wear on you. And we can’t get away from it,” Samuels said. “We can’t go bowling. We can’t go swimming. We can’t play whiffle ball. We can’t get away from it right now.

“If we had a four-day break, we could say, let’s go to the pool. Let’s get our minds off it. But right now, we can’t do that.”