After securing its first Ohio Valley Conference regular season title since 2009, Eastern baseball prepares itself for a run at the OVC tournament championship as the 1-seed and an auto-bid to the NCAA regionals.

The regular season title is a first for Jason Anderson in his time as head coach. Success in the OVC tournament isn’t, however. The Panthers shocked the conference by winning it as the 5-seed in 2023.

In that season, the Panthers were underdogs. This season, they’re the top dogs.

“It’s been a hard year,” said Anderson, who was named the OVC Coach of the Year on Tuesday. “[The players] all came together to do this thing, and so it’s pretty cool to see. It’s not often as a coach you see a unit like this that works together to [win a regular season championship].”

Eastern (29-20, 17-7) had three games canceled due to inclement weather, and finished in first place on winning percentage over Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. The Panthers won 11 out of their final 13 games in conference play.

Eastern’s pitching staff has been the backbone of its success this season. The Panthers have a team ERA of 4.96; the second lowest in the conference. Eastern is also second in runs allowed, hits allowed, walks allowed and opponent batting average.

Finishing second in those pitching categories is an improvement from last season when the Panthers finished seventh in team ERA and in the middle of the conference in all the categories that they finished second in this season.

“To quote Vince Lombardi, as a pitching staff we talked about chasing perfection knowing we won’t get there but knowing in the process we’ll be excellent,” said pitching coach Max Feske, who’s in his first season with Eastern after serving as the pitching coach at Western Illinois last season. “This group has been nothing short of that.”

Anderson confirmed that the team will have all of its pitchers available for the tournament, including grad left-hander Tyler Kapraun, who leads the team with just over 72 innings pitched and 60 strikeouts, and senior right-hander Tyler Conklin, who has the lowest ERA on the team at 3.72.

Both Kapraun and Conklin along with sophomore right-hander Anthony Solis have been the mainstays in the Eastern starting rotation, with a few others getting spot starts during a period of just over a month where Conklin was unavailable.

“I just think we have a lot of pitching depth to get through a tournament,” Anderson said. “The whole thing is: can we get to the top two or the top four to get the byes, and we’ve done that. So, we’re in a great spot.”

Junior right-hander Dalton Boruff, the team leader with five save, brings stability to the back end of games, while senior right-hander Christian Carew has blossomed into a bullpen arm that can handle pitching across multiple innings, and was the pitcher to get the final four outs on Saturday to secure a 9-7 win over Western Illinois and win the regular season title.

“We’re really confident in who we are,” Carew said. “But we can’t look out too far into the future, but we know that if we do what we know we can do that we’ll be somewhere we want to be at the end of the year.”

Eastern drastically improved offensively from the beginning of OVC play, which Anderson has said is a result of getting a chance to play at home after beginning the season with 18 games away from home.

Going into its conference and home opener against Lindenwood, the Panthers were last in the OVC with a .238 team batting average.

Now, Eastern has a .290 batting average, second best in the OVC, to go along with an OVC-best .404 on-base percentage and an NCAA-best 70 sacrifice bunts.

“The recipe this year is fantastic because we don’t have to rely on a superstar,” hitting coach Mike Pugliese said. “The strength of this team is all nine hitters together.”

Eastern will await the winner of Southeast Missouri’s game against either Southern Indiana or Little Rock. The Trojans made the tournament despite getting swept by SEMO last weekend thanks to Eastern’s sweep of Western Illinois.

If Southern Indiana beats Little Rock Wednesday afternoon, it would advance to play SEMO Wednesday evening, and the winner of that game would advance to play Eastern on Thursday at 11 a.m.

Eastern won its series against the Screaming Eagles during the regular season, while SEMO is the only team that the Panthers lost an OVC series to. The Redhawks came back to claim one-run victories in the final two games of the series after Eastern won the opener 6-3 in 19 innings to mark the longest game in OVC history.

The Panthers have the advantage of getting to begin tournament play in the double elimination bracket, which Pugliese says is a huge advantage. Last season, Eastern was a first round exit as the 6-seed.

“I think that’s a huge advantage,” Puglise said. “We’ve earned that this year, which is great.”

A loss in their first game means the Panthers would drop down into the elimination bracket and take on the loser of SIUE’s game, which begins after Eastern’s game, Thursday night. A win would mean the Panthers take on the winner of that game on Friday for a chance to go to the championship.

Should the Panthers win the OVC tournament for the second time in three years, it would mark the first time the regular season champion went on to win the tournament since 2021, and the fifth time that has happened since 2013.

Eastern has won three OVC tournament championships in program history.