The Eastern women’s basketball team will finish up its three-game road trip this weekend at Southern Illinois-Edwardsville.
Eastern has yet to win a game on the road this season and is currently enduring a 20-game losing streak. The Cougars are coming into this weekend’s game riding a five-game winning streak. They are currently 13-9 overall and 8-1 in the conference. Seven of those wins have come at home.
The leading scorer for the Cougars is redshirt senior Shronda Butts, who averages 21 point per game and is also the team leader in assists with 90 on the season. She has started all 22 games they have played this season and is one of the team leaders in steals with 45. The leader in rebounds is sophomore Donshel Beck, who averages seven a game. She averages nine points a game and has also started every game this season.
The Cougars are coming off of a 72-61 road victory against Austin Peay where they shot a season-high 54 percent from the field after hitting 64 percent of the shots in the second half. Butts had a team-high 20 points while adding four assists. Beck shot a season-best 8-of-9 from the field and finished with 17 points.
The Cougars now have six come-from-behind victories after trailing at the half against Austin Peay. Turnovers were a problem as they had 13 in each half giving them a season-high 26. They were also taking the ball away as they notched a season-high 15 steals. Freshman Sydney Bauman came off the bench and had three of those steals.
Leading scorers for Eastern are Shakita Cox and Erica Brown who average 10 points a game. Brown is also the team leader in rebounds with seven a game. Cox is the leader in steals with 37 this year. The assist leader is sophomore Grace Lennox who has over 100 assists on the year.
In the 10-point loss to Murray State on Wednesday night, Lennox was the team’s leading scorer with 12 points. Brown added 11 points and just missed a double-double as she also had eight rebounds. Sophomore Jalisha Smith had her first career start and had a career high nine rebounds.
The Panthers are 19-4 all-time against the Cougars. SIUE did however win both the head to head matchups last season as they won by double-digits in both contests.
The game is Saturday at 2 p.m. in Edwardsville.