It was so close, but so far away for the Eastern women’s basketball team last Saturday against Austin Peay at Lantz Arena.

Trailing 50-47 with 41 seconds left against the defending Ohio Valley Conference champs, the Panthers needed a stand on the defensive end for a chance to tie up the contest.

Unfortunately for the Panthers, Gerlonda Hardin had other ideas. The Lady Govs senior center received a pass near the top of the key and drove to the basket for the two biggest of her nine points.

After the key hoop, junior guard Cassandra Peek connected on two free throws with five seconds left to give Austin Peay a 54-47 win. In the process, Eastern saw its losing streak hit seven and OVC record fall to 0-2.

Panthers head coach Linda Wunder said she relished the opportunity for Eastern to have a chance at knocking off one of the conferences’ top teams.

“Heading into the game, if I knew we would be down by three points to Austin Peay with 41 seconds left you’ll always take that,” Wunder said. “It’s a credit to the way our team played. (The game) was laid out for us, and we put ourselves in position to win the ball game.”

Eastern found themselves down 24-20 at the half, but quickly went on a 9-2 run after the intermission to gain the lead. The Lady Govs answered with 11 straight points to regain control of the game. Never down by more than nine points, Eastern closed to within three in the final minute but was unable to get any closer.

“I thought we played pretty tough except for the one stretch when Austin Peay scored 11 in a row,” Wunder said. “In our last two games (Tennessee Tech and Austin Peay) we’ve gone toe-to-toe with two of the top teams in our league and pretty much been right there. We need to clean up a couple of things in practice and then we’ll start winning those games.”

The game featured the top two field goal percentage leaders in the OVC as Eastern’s Pam O’Connor squared off with Hardin. Before Hardin’s game clinching basket, both centers failed to live up to the pre-game hype.

O’Connor shot just 4-of-14 from the field and missed her only free throw attempt. The junior totaled just eight points during the forgettable afternoon and saw her streak of consecutive games in double-digit points end at 40. This game marked just the seventh time in 68 career games that O’Connor did not reach double-figures.

Fouls plagued the league’s preseason ‘Player of the Year’ Hardin as she shot just 3-of -11 from the floor in 29 minutes. While O’Connor and Hardin struggled offensively, both were sharp of the defensive end. O’Connor led the Panthers with nine rebounds and one block. Hardin chimed in with seven rebounds and a team-high one block.

Poor shooting was evident throughout the game with Eastern (the OVC team field goal percentage leader) hitting on only 32 percent of their attempts. Austin Peay was slightly better connecting on 37 percent of their shots. The Lady Govs made their mark offensively by converting on 7-of-14 from the three-point line while Eastern was 2-of-10 from downtown.

Despite falling to 0-2 in conference, Wunder remains upbeat about Eastern’s chances of turning things around with two more games on the home stand.

“We’ve played teams very well recently,” Wunder said. “Our next step is to just win a game.”

Eastern will be looking for that win this Tuesday when the Panthers host Southeast Missouri at 5:15 p.m.