In a complete role reversal from last season, the Panther volleyball team lost 3-1 to Southeast Missouri Tuesday in Lantz Arena.

Last year, SEMO played the Panthers with a young team and lost 3-0. This year youth wasn’t served by Eastern and the Otahkians took advantage.

“They’re a young team and we took advantage of that,” SEMO head coach Cindy Gannon said. “Eastern has a good team here, if they can just come together. They can be a force.”

The Panthers committed 13 blocking and ball handling errors while the Otahkians (8-9, 3-2 in the Ohio Valley Conference) committed none. Almost all of those errors came at key times in the match.

Eastern (6-12, 1-4) has dropped nine of its last 10 matches.

In Game 3, the Panthers built a 24-21 lead late in the third game before they committed back-to-back ball handling errors which allowed the Otahkians to tie the game at 25-apiece. Eastern never led the rest of the game and lost 30-27.

“We put ourselves in a position to win, we just had too many unforced errors,” Panther head coach Brenda Winkeler said. “When (outside hitter Erica) Gerth went to the back row we had problems finding someone to get a kill.”

The 5-foot-11 sophomore from El Paso had 24 kills in 55 attempts and also led the defense with 19 digs. Senior outside hitter Karen Liss had 15 kills despite struggling early in the match. Freshman libero Sarah Niedospial had 17 digs.

“There was a big drop off after them,” Winkeler said. “We have to have more than one person have a good night.”

The Panthers led in each game, but couldn’t hold on except for Game 2, when Eastern jumped out to an 18-11 lead.

Eastern led 5-2 in Game 1, but the Otahkians went on a 9-3 rally and never relinquished the lead en route to a 30-21 win.

“We’re still looking for the answers and I think we found one tonight,” Winkeler said. “Chandra Hensley really helped us tonight and I think we found someone that can help us when (senior outside hitter) Jennifer Fisher isn’t having a good night.”

Hensley had one assist and two digs in limited action.

Winkeler also used local product Nikki Fowler at setter for the first time this season. The Lakeland College transfer had nine sets and one kill in two attack attempts.

SEMO senior Emily Johnson led the Otahkians with 21 kills and three other players including Jessica Houpt, another Lakeland transfer, had 10 kills.

Eastern out-blocked SEMO 12-10, but was out-matched in every other statistic.

While the Panthers have already lost four conference matches, they have played all of the teams that are currently in the league’s top half.

“We’ve got a couple of the tougher teams out of the way,” Gerth said. “We’re going to try to make a comeback and this weekend will help because we play two of the weaker teams (Austin Peay and Tennessee Tech).”