Women’s basketball team finishes up season with 3-25 record

Mark Shanahan, Staff Reporter

The Eastern women’s basketball team recently finished up its season with an overall record of 3-25, and players are looking forward to the future, as they will only be losing two players to graduation.

The Panthers endured a tough 21-game losing streak during the majority of the season before getting back on their feet to win two games in a row, then losing the last four games.

Two of their three wins came against conference opponents Austin Peay and Southeast Missouri, but they were 2-14 against conference opponents.

Eastern was not able to win a game away from Lantz Arena this year as 15 of their 25 losses came on the road. Home court did not prove to be that friendly to them either as their home record was 3-10.

Junior Erica Brown was the team’s leading scorer and rebounder for the Panthers this season. She averaged 10.1 points per game and was grabbing seven rebounds a game. Eastern will miss senior Shakita Cox who was the team’s second leading scorer and started all 28 games.

Cox averaged 9.6 points per game and was the team leader with steals with her 42 this season. Cox was only one of three Panthers to start in every game this season along with Brown and sophomore Grace Lennox. Lennox was the assist leader on the team by a wide margin with her 130 on the year. Her 4.6 assists per game was fourth best in the OVC.

Lennox is also top five among players in the OVC in minutes played and assist to turnover ratio. She clocked in 989 minutes this season and averaged 35.3 minutes per game.

Eastern had problems with getting their offense going throughout the year as they finished second to last in the OVC with 60.1 points per game. They finished last in scoring margin as they were giving up 74.5 point a game making the margin -14.4.

Another main area where the Panthers struggled this season was in rebounding. They finished second to last in the OVC in offensive rebounding and last in conference in defensive rebounding.

The Panthers ended up finishing last in the Ohio Valley Conference in the standings. The OVC tournament is set to begin on Wednesday with first round matchups between Tennessee-Martin and Murray State and Belmont against Tennessee State. First round games will continue on Thursday with matchups between Eastern Kentucky and Austin Peay and SIU Edwardsville vs. Southeast Missouri.

This is the first time in over eight seasons that the Panthers did not qualify for the Ohio Valley Conference tournament.

 

Mark Shanahan can be reached at 581-2812 or at [email protected]