Eastern manager Lloydene Searle understands that her team is heading into a troublesome time if things don’t start to turn their season around.

Searle is quick to explain its not that her team doesn’t have the ability or hasn’t been giving the effort to win, but its just combining those two ingredients that has the team baffled at this point in time.

The Panthers have lost 15 of their last 16 contests and the players are losing confidence as the losses mount in conference play. The only victory for Eastern in the Ohio Valley Conference came against Southeast Missouri State last week.

“Right now the team is deflated,” Searle said. “I have to be concerned with their confidence at this point, but they’ve proven to me that they are mature enough to handle what they are going through right now.

“When some teams may just want to roll over, this team just talks about what they can improve upon in practice.”

This optimistic, or at least determined, approach to the struggles the team is going through encourages Searle, who feels that her team is not that far away.

Perhaps this past weekend’s three losses to Samford best prove to Searle and her coaching staff that the Panthers are close to finding winning ways again.

The youth on the pitching staff has been a focal point for the team thus far, but the Eastern coach does not want to push the young arms too much too soon.

Pitchers like Andrea Darnell, Heather Hoeschen and Brittany Whelan have been leading this year’s pitching staff, and have been doing a good job of at least keeping Eastern in the game. But as the offense has fallen upon hard times, the Panthers pitching staff hasn’t found many ways to win with run production being so low.

“I don’t want to push those pitchers too much, especially when the offense isn’t producing as much as they could be,” Searle said. “The underlying factor that we have to realize is how to balance the solid pitching we’ve been getting with some timely hitting.”

One of the losses over the weekend to Samford was in extra innings, and both of the first two games of the series could have fallen in Eastner’s favor. But late inning success went to the Bulldogs instead of the Panthers, and that is something Searle is getting all too familiar with.

“Samford, for whatever reason, was really good late in the game in going the other way with pitches,” Searle said. “They got the clutch hits they needed, while we couldn’t quite find those hits late in the game.”

But coming off their 15th loss in 16 games, Eastern will be looking to improve by the time their next couple of games come up against Butler.

Butler is only 7-23 overall, but still Searle and her team feel that they have to take advantage of the practice opportunities before they play Butler.

“The main concern for us is how we can improve today not what we have to look forward to,” Searle said. “We know that Butler is an aggressive team and is solid defensively, but right now we have to remain focused on improving ourselves.”