The Panthers fell under a second half collapse due to the 51 points racked up by Southeast Missouri in the final 20 minutes.

SEMO forced Eastern to turn the ball over 19 times ,which contributed to their second half collapse.

SEMO played man to man defense in the first half and then came out in a variation of a 1-3-1 in the second half, which confused the Panthers.

“We just can’t change pages right now,” head coach Rick Samuels said. “We didn’t know how to beat their defense until I called a time out.”

In addition to SEMO’s stingy defense and Eastern’s inability to take care of the basketball, Indians junior guard Derek Winans had 21 second half points for the Indians.

“We had a lot of players play well for us tonight,” Garner said. “But Winans was lights out.”

“The ball just felt good tonight,” Winans said. “Every time I touched it, (the ball) I thought I could make something good happen for my team.”

Winans said before each game he comes out and takes as many shots as he needs to get himself feeling loose. He said the amount of shots he takes before a game varies but he always shoots until he feels good.

Samuels said he recruited Winans out of high school and offered him a scholarship to play for the Panthers. Instead of taking a basketball scholarship from Eastern, he took an academic scholarship SEMO offered him.

“SEMO didn’t even recruit him but he lives 10 miles from the campus,” Samuels said. “He can’t be mad at us for not recruiting him. The kid can play.”

The Indians had lost their previous two games in which head coach Gary Garner felt his team could have won.

“We screwed both of our last two games up but tonight we came out focused,” Garner said.

Garner was most happy with his teams man to man defense and the effort his players put forth as a team.

Winans said his team hasn’t played forty minutes of basketball better than they did Tuesday night.

“That was our best effort as a team all year,” Winans said.

“The bottom line was SEMO played extremely well in the second half,” Samuels said. “They got their snowball rolling early and it’s hard to play a good game when you’re nipping at their heels.”