“Well, we got some work to do.”

This was the simplest of statements from Eastern head coach Rick Samuels after his team’s disappointing effort against Southeast Missouri Tuesday night; a game the Panthers lost 84-64.

Although the message was simple from their coach, the next couple of weeks could be anything but simple for the Panthers, especially if their coach has something to say about it.

After their home game on Saturday against Tennessee State, the Panthers go on the road for six of their next eight Ohio Valley Conference games.

This will be a test for the Panthers to see how they prepare and if they are ready to compete against solid teams that are usually extremely hard to beat at home.

Samuels’ disappointment in his team was obvious even before the final buzzer sounded Tuesday night. The expression on his face after junior guard Derik Hollyfield received a technical foul after trash-talking following a blocked shot was one of disbelief.

The technical foul led to a stern talking to on the sideline as Hollyfield was fouled out of the game.

Showing emotion is not always a bad thing for certain players, but to trash talk after a good defensive play is something else. Especially considering Hollyfield’s team was down by 15 points at the moment, his actions seemed even more out of place.

His coach and Hollyfield’s teammates wanted him to know that they feel he needs to be a major contributor to the team, but they also felt that plays like that just couldn’t take place.

Moreover, there is just no place for that kind of outburst in a game that one’s team is barely competing in anymore. Not much, if anything, good can come from trash talking and when a team is down by that much it is pointless to open your mouth.

But there also seemed to be other troubling matters for the Panthers.

At least Hollyfield showed some emotion during the game. Very few other players seemed to notice that the Panthers were completely crumbling away during a conference game.

From the look of many faces, it seemed that the players were just going through the motions, while SEMO was busy running circles around the Panthers on both ends of the court.

The execution of the Panthers in the second half was so lacking that their coach even questioned if the team could recognize a zone defense when the Indians switched to one.

Early in the second half, SEMO started to switch back and forth between their base man-to-man defense and a zone.

The Panthers reaction to the switch in defense wasn’t apparent. The player who had the biggest impact in the game, in a positive way, hardly saw the ball after the switch to zone.

Aaron Patterson finished the game with 19 points and nine rebounds, but when the Indians went to a zone defense all the Eastern guards saw was the three point line and thought they should shoot behind it.

This didn’t work out too well, and distance started to be widened between the two teams that lead to the blow out final score.

“Our execution wasn’t solid against the zone. In fact we didn’t do anything against it until I called a time out, and this was something we had prepared for in practice,” Samuels said.

So that means that the Panthers were so lost in the second half that they couldn’t stop the Indians on the defensive end of the floor, especially SEMO guard Derek Winans who finished the game with 29 points, and also they couldn’t function offensively against a defense that had practiced for.

That either means two things.

The first being that the message coach Samuels is trying to give his team throughout practice isn’t being received by the team.

Or the teaching of coach Samuels isn’t what the team needs to prepare for certain teams.

Whichever one is true, the Panthers seem unprepared for certain teams in certain games. In situations like that something needs to change, and fast. Otherwise it could be a long road trip for Eastern after their home game on Saturday.