The Eastern women’s basketball team defeated Tennessee State 79-67 Saturday to finish its regular season victoriously. Tonight, the scoreboard resets.

The two teams take the same floor tonight to kick off the Ohio Valley Conference Tournament in first round play at 5:30 p.m. in Lantz Arena.

Senior forward Maggie Kloak will experience a unique circumstance in today’s game as she said she thinks it is the first time she has ever played a team back-to-back at Eastern.

“I think it’s a good thing because we’ve been able to see the things we weren’t good at against them,” Kloak said. “We can perfect ourselves for tomorrow’s game.”

Senior guard Dominique Sims said the Panthers will look to perfect their rebounding and defense, which were lacking Saturday.

“We’re going in there with a dominating mindset right now,” Sims said. “We need to get on the boards a little bit better than our last game and we need to defend better, too.”

Eastern out-rebounded the Tigers 45-36 Saturday and held its opponent to a 36 percent shooting percentage, but Sims said she is not satisfied.

“Those are the things you have to go in to the game with and know that those are the things that we got beat at, so it’s different,” Sims said.

For the Panthers, the last two practices have seemed strangely familiar, having just played and beaten the Tigers.

“We get to watch film of us playing them instead of them playing someone else,” Sims said. “So it’s different. It’s like a different mind frame.”

Besides watching film, Eastern head coach Brady Sallee said the main structure of practice has not changed.

“We try to keep it exactly like any other day,” Sallee said. “We are trying to sharpen up on some things that we saw in film and some things we felt like we could do better.”

In honing team skills, Eastern has a consistent equation leading to many wins this season.

“I think it’s about playing defense consistently, being good rebounding the ball and taking care of the ball,” Sallee said. “That’s where our focus is.”

For Kloak & Co., they have never been more focused, especially coming into tournament play.

“If we don’t play our best, our season could be over,” Kloak said. “We know Tennessee State is going to come out and give us their best right here because records don’t matter in tournament play right now.”

Going into today’s game, Sallee said his team should not struggle early in figuring out the Tigers’ game plan.

Sallee said the game’s outlook will be completely different, given Eastern knows how the Tigers play.

“For the players, there is no feeling out process,” Sallee said. “Now, you hope, that it’s the second time through you’ll expect that screen and you’ll expect a player to go left and pull up to take the jump shot like it said on the scout.”

Eastern will not be lacking motivation come game time.

“This is an exciting time of year for us; especially for us seniors as our last go round,” Kloak said. “We’re coming into it with a goal and it’s to win this championship.”

With three plus games potentially left in the season, the Panthers are focused on living their championship dreams. The dream could start or end tonight.

Alex McNamee can be reached at 581-7944 or [email protected].