Two years ago, Brady Sallee sat at a press table in the dark shadow of another early exit from the Ohio Valley Conference tournament and promised his team would keep trying to “break down the door,” and “be on top of the ladder one day.”

He meant the Eastern women’s basketball team was not going to fade away or give up. He meant the team would be on the championship ladder, climbing up it to cut down the nets one day soon.

On Monday, the team was knocked out of the Women’s National Invitation Tournament in the second round; however, it had already broken down the door and was on top of a ladder — though with a different head coach.

When Sallee announced he was leaving Eastern for Ball State in May, I wasn’t the only one a little surprised.

I talked to senior guard Kelsey Wyss immediately after the announcement, and she mentioned that the news caught her off guard.

I talked to red-shirt sophomore guard Katlyn Payne this year, and looking back, she was shocked, too.

We all knew that day was coming, but didn’t know when. Nobody I talked to expected it to be before a season like this one, when Eastern returned its four-star seniors for one final run at postseason glory.

The team won the OVC regular season title this season, and coach Lee Buchanan was voted OVC Coach of the Year, but the Panthers didn’t win in the OVC tournament.

So people dismissed the Panthers entering the WNIT because they hadn’t won a postseason game in the program’s history.

But they got a good draw in the brackets. They played and beat Missouri in the last two years and now they had another chance to do it in the first round.

They did, breaking down the door and climbing to the top of the ladder. It wasn’t a championship, but it was an important step for the program.

Eastern cemented itself as legitimate competition for power conference schools like Missouri, from the Southeastern Conference.

On Monday, they had chance to do it again — against Illinois in the second round of the WNIT. They lost, but had the Illini on the ropes for about 30 to 35 minutes of the game.

It was unfortunate, not only because it’s the end of a great four years from this senior class — Ta’Kenya Nixon, Mariah King, Kelsey Wyss, Sydney Mitchell — but because the magic of March seemed like it was in their favor.

Buchanan said after Monday’s game that the team thought it could just keep winning. It was more than just his feeling. The vibe of Eastern’s first two games in the WNIT was that something special was going on — the seniors didn’t want to be done yet.

The magic had to end somewhere, though, and it seems fitting that Eastern’s season ended at Assembly Hall, the Mecca of Illinois college sports, where the Panthers had the Illini on the verge of losing.

Questions definitely emerged after Sallee left: Will Eastern plummet without the coach that had built the program, basically from the ground up?

The players endured, led by a group of special seniors, who refused to lose. Those who followed this team wont soon forget these faces of history.

Alex McNamee can be reached at 581-2812 or [email protected].