Most coaches will always say their team will learn a lot more from a loss than from a win.

But while a coach’s team may be learning as they lose a couple of games, you can rest assured they are not all too happy that the team is filling up the loss column as the season goes along.

This is the reason why I have been surprised this season with Eastern’s very own football coach. At times, Bob Spoo seemed to be more impressed with his team after a loss than after a win.

Now, granted this year’s football team is about as easy to piece together as a jigsaw puzzle, but something seems a little odd about a team that has the energy level to impress their coach during a loss. However, this same team seems to lack any passion or love for the game during a victory.

I don’t doubt that there could be a bright future for the Panthers, which are currently relying on a freshman-dominated offensive line and a freshman running back who has surprised many people.

But hopefully for the Panthers sake, intensity is something that is acquired with experience. Otherwise this could be a confusing team for years to come.

At the beginning of the season it is easy to see how the wind could be knocked out of the team since it lost to a much more talented Missouri team, and also lost to Illinois State. The rivalry game against ISU was a game Eastern could have come out of with a huge momentum-building victory, but the young Panthers couldn’t execute in the second half and let ISU out of Charleston with a victory. But maybe if the team was experienced, they would have come back out of those games with a fresh desire to win.

But the Panthers continued to slide with three more losses. The losing streak was finally brought to an end with an impressive victory against Murray State on the road. Then the Panthers followed that up with another win against the whipping boy of the Ohio Valley Conference, Tennessee-Martin.

Martin is improved this year, but it is still a team Eastern expects a victory against. One would have expected Spoo to have been jubilant after seemingly turning around his young team by winning two in a row.

But he wasn’t because he said his team lacked any sort of fire or emotion that is necessary to win at this level after the victory against Tennessee-Martin.

So then Spoo turned into a prophet considering his team lost its next game against Tennessee State.

But again the answer was no, because after the loss Spoo felt the team had the fire he had seen against Murray State, regardless of the outcome.

That leaves us with a team that either doesn’t have the fire to compete in the OVC, or it does but just hasn’t learned how to win on a consistent basis.

That should prove the 2003 Panthers are a perfect example of how important experience is on the football field.

Learning how to win is just as important to having the talent to win, and Eastern is going through the process of learning how to win.

Only time will tell when they have learned how to win. Up until then it is anybody’s guess as to which version of the Panthers will show up.