Every game the Eastern women’s basketball team will play this season will be used as a measuring stick for the team use to judge itself on where it is at in its development process as a rebuilding program. Eastern’s Wednesday match against Bradley will serve as one more unit of measurement for the team. 

The Panthers surpassed one of its goals on that stick in its last game when they beat Fort Wayne 72-63. Last season Fort Wayne stomped the Panthers 93-77, so going into this season’s rematch, Eastern viewed the game as a good tell as to how much improved the Panthers really were this year. 

Eastern beat Fort Wayne and now the Panthers will take the same measuring stick mentality on the road against Bradley where once again Eastern will be faced with a team that beat them last season. The big difference is Bradley is a better team than Fort Wayne, which means Eastern will be especially focused on how it plays against the Braves. Eastern head coach Matt Bollant said the Bradley game is “definitely” he next step in measuring how competitive Eastern can be this season. 

“They are quite a bit better I think than Fort Wayne, so we’re going to have to play well,” Bollant said. “But let’s see if we can do it, especially on the road as well.”

Bradley beat Eastern last season 67-52 and this season the Braves return an even better team, beginning their season with a 4-0 record, notching big wins against Florida Atlantic and Southeast Missouri. 

But Eastern is better too this season, already matching its win total from all of last season of three, just four games into the season. Exactly how much better Eastern is however will be put to the test against Bradley.

“They are better than they were last year, they just beat a really good Florida Atlantic team on their home court by 21. So, we’ve got our hands full,” Bollant said. “But, we’re excited to see, obviously we improved against Fort Wayne, that we’re a much better basketball team than we were last year. Last year Bradley handed it to us.”

The Bradley game will not just give Eastern an idea of its readiness to compete as a whole, but very specifically it will show how ready this young team is to compete on the road. 

Eastern was 0-14 on the road and is already 0-1 this season thanks to an ugly 72-37 loss to Butler. Confidence will carry over for Eastern from the Fort Wayne win, but the challenge of winning on the road is still a mountain Eastern has to climb.

“I’m just hoping we can play better on the road,” Bollant said. “Let’s go and play with confidence, let’s play smart and let’s see where we’re at.”

Eastern has taken full recognition of its struggles on the road, there has been no hiding from the 0-14 figure the team managed on the road last season. So ahead of a road game against an undefeated Bradley team, Bollant kept his message to the team simple. 

“Let’s go be us, let’s go be confident, let’s control what we can control,” Bollant said. “I don’t think we did that against Butler and lately one thing we have got to have better is shot selection. We took a lot of bad shots early against Butler and that led to them in transition and we turned it over which led to their transition. So just being better with our shot selection and taking care of the ball will give us a chance to get off to a good start.”

Bradley’s 85-79 win over Southeast Missouri is of particular interest to Eastern as Southeast Missouri resides in the OVC with the Panthers. 

 “SEMO (Southeast Missouri) is a good basketball team, SEMO played well in that game, but it was a close game so that certainly should give us some hope as well, that SEMO scores 79 against them and only lost by six,” Bollant said. “So, that should give us some confidence.”

JJ Bullock can be reached at 581-2812 or [email protected].