Welcome back to beautiful Charleston, Eastern students.

The temperatures are dropping as the winter cold tightens its grip on central Illinois, but the court inside Lantz Arena is just starting to heat up.

One man is heating up the court and lighting the nets in Lantz on fire. To no surprise to anyone in the Ohio Valley Conference, that man is senior guard Henry Domercant.

While the rest of the student body was away on winter break, Domercant was scoring points at such a pace that all other players in the nation are playing catch up to Oh Henry.

The Panthers played six games between the end of the Fall 2002 semester and the Spring 2003 semester. In those six games, Domercant averaged 28.6 points per game. The fewest points Domercant was held to over break was 19 points against Morehead State.

Domercant had a strong showing at the Hawaii Adidas Festival against Hawaii and Cal-Poly. He scored 25 points against the tournament hosts and 24 points against Cal-Poly.

When Domercant and the Panthers returned to the mainland, he celebrated by scoring 38 points on his 22nd birthday Dec. 30 against in-state rival Nothern Illinois.

Then Domercant got the Panthers off to a good start in the OVC, by leading the Panthers to a win over Southeast Missouri State with 35 points.

Morehead had some kind of home court voodoo working against Domercant last Thursday, but Domercant was back on track against Eastern Kentucky Saturday with 30 points.

However, Domercant’s gaudy offensive numbers might be overshadowed by a poor Panthers record. The Panthers will go into their first home game of the OVC season with a 5-9 record overall and 1-2 in conference play.

Historically, Lantz Arena has been a haven for the Panthers. The Panthers were undefeated in Lantz Arena during the 2000-01 and last year they only lost three of their 13 home games. So far this season, the Panthers have kept up their winning ways in Lantz Arena. They have won all three of their home games. Eastern has beaten Evansville and in-state rivals Western Illinois and Western Illinois in the “Panther Pit” as it is refered to in Eastern’s men’s basketball media guide.

There is no doubt in my mind that Domercant will continue to put up big numbers and will go on to finish in the top five leading scorers in the nation for the third season in a row, an accomplishment that would put him in the company of NBA greats Larry Bird, Pete Maravich, Bill Bradley and Oscar Robinson.

The only question in my mind is who will step up and help Domercant bare the burden of carrying Eastern’s offense. Personally I would like to Jesse Mackinson step up as a consistant scorer. A strong offensive threat inside would give the Panthers offense good balance and would allow them to attack teams in the post and burry opponents from the outside.

Mackinson has done a good job so far this season scoring 10.7 points per game, but he has not been the consistent scorer that I had hoped he would be.

J.R. Reynolds has had a hot and cold season so far and is averaging 11.8. Samuels has recently started to sit Reynolds to start games in the hopes that Reynolds will be able to score off the bench when Domercant is sitting out of the game.

So far Domercant has not sat out much, he is averaging 32.6 minutes played per game.

Samuels will need to find the right combination of players on the court to releave Domercant from some of his scoring responsibilities or he might run empty by March.