A four-win improvement from the previous season.

A third straight Ohio Valley Conference Freshman of the Year in guard Romain Martin.

A second straight year of finishing in the top two in the conference in free throw percentage.

Those are some of the bright spots from this past season for Eastern men’s basketball.

A second straight year of finishing 10th in the 11-team conference in scoring offense.

A second straight year of at least 20 losses.

A second straight year of not making the OVC postseason tournament.

Two straight losing seasons under second-year head coach Mike Miller, whose career record at Eastern is now 16-41.

Those are some of the not-so-bright spots for Eastern men’s basketball.

And with the conclusion of the Panthers season on Feb. 24 at Samford, Miller and his players are already looking forward to next season.

“I want to get to the top half of our league,” Miller said Monday. “We’re going to have to play more consistently and better throughout the year to make that happen. You can’t do that if you don’t have a great offseason.”

The offseason work for the Panthers began Monday, with Miller saying the team will go through a regimented, weight-lifting program through the spring, and work on individual skills with the players.

The team will work with strength coach Michael Hall four days a week for six weeks before the semester ends.

Miller and his staff get two hours per week to work with the players on an individual basis.

“Working on a lot of offensive skill is going to be the biggest thing,” Miller said.

The Panthers finished the year with averaging 61.1 points.

Those numbers are only slightly better than the 2005-06 Eastern squad that averaged 60.8 points.

“One area we want to improve, and it starts with who we have here, is our scoring,” Miller said.

Miller said the team still has one open scholarship to offer, and everyone on this year’s roster, except Ryan Voss, who is set to graduate, will be back for next year to join Matt Dorlack, a 6-foot-11 center out of Eisenhower High School in New Berlin, Wis.

Miller returned early Tuesday morning from a recruiting trip to Michigan, and is still looking for more potential recruits.

Every player that started a game this year will return next season for a team that finished 10-20.

Martin, who averaged 14.8 points as the Panthers leading scorer, will again be in the backcourt with sophomore Mike Robinson (10 points per game and 109 assists this year). Robinson, the 2006 OVC Freshman of the Year, has started all 57 games during his two-year Eastern career.

The team will have five seniors, with 6-foot-6 forward Bobby Catchings (second on the team at 10.1 points and second-leading rebounder at 5.1) and 6-foot-8 center Jake Byrne (7.7 ppg) having the most experience here at Eastern.

Catchings, who red-shirted during the 2003-04 season, has never experienced a winning season during his time in Charleston.

He said after the season-ending loss at Samford, he knows he will be looked at more as a leader coming into his final season, and embraces that concept.

The fifth starter for the last half of the season, Ousmane Cisse (5.9 ppg and a team-leading 6.1 rpg), will return and Miller said next year’s squad has a potentially great chance to improve on its rebounding numbers.

The three junior college transfers Miller brought in last year, Gino Myers-Kyles (6-foot-4 guard) Julio Anthony (6-foot-4 guard) and Jon’Tee “Bam” Willhite (6-foot-1 guard) are all expected to return, Miller said.

Anthony (2.8 ppg) was limited in his first year in Charleston, playing in the first 13 games before being ruled academically ineligible and not playing after the Dec. 22 game against Western Illinois.

Willhite started 15 of the 30 games, mostly in the first half of the season, and averaged 5.1 points this season.

Myers-Kyles (2 ppg) came off the bench for 25 games and said he expects next year’s team to be more productive.

“We had to get used to each other this year,” he said.

Freshmen post players Justin Brock (2.1 ppg) and Bobby Joliff (1.4 ppg) will return, and sophomore forward Billy Parrish (2.2 ppg) will return for his third season at Eastern.

I think the January stretch that we had, obviously was difficult,” Miller said about his team’s 1-7 record in that month. “But with the inexperience and maybe immaturity of a young team, at times, we had to go through those growing pains. I don’t think they ever went out there and didn’t focus and try and play. It just wasn’t ready at the time. We weren’t ready to win those games.”