Eastern’s head baseball coach Jimmy Schmitz admitted the Panthers 14-game losing streak was not only disappointing to the team, but also to Schmitz’s own family. So when Eastern defeated Olivet Nazarene 4-2 at Coaches Stadium Wednesday afternoon to end the streak, needless to say, Schmitz was pleased.

“This win means my family will let me eat dinner at home,” Schmitz joked.

However, Schmitz won’t have much time to digest his food or the Panthers victory. Eastern will hit the diamond for its Ohio Valley Conference opening series this weekend as they host Tennessee-Martin.

Much like the Panthers, Tennessee-Martin has struggled out of the gate this season. The Skyhawks are just 5-13 early on, but the team is coming off one of their most impressive wins of the season when they went on the road to defeat Saint Louis University 8-3 earlier in the week.

In the victory against the Billikens, Tennessee-Martin pounded out 17 hits while the pitching staff held Saint Louis at bay allowing only four hits and walking two batters. Sophomore starter Scott Massey picked up the win for the Skyhawks by surrendering just one run in three innings. Reliever Justin Bryant entered the ballgame in the fourth inning and shut down Saint Louis for three straight frames before setup man Dustin Summers pitched the seventh and closer Ben Meador picked up the save with a perfect eighth and ninth inning.

“We played very well in all areas of the game,” head coach Bubba Cates said.

Besides a young pitching staff, Tennessee-Martin also has a powerful lineup with four players hitting over .300. Senior infielder Bryant Jones leads the charge with a .507 average in the Skyhawks first 18 games. Jones is also tops in hits (35), runs scored (21), slugging percentage (.754) and on base percentage (.545).

Behind Jones at the plate is sophomore catcher Brett Spivy who has a batting average near .340 and leads the Skyhawks with 15 RBI, and is second on the team with 32 total bases.

If Eastern is to put together their first winning streak of the season the pitching staff will have to turn in another performance similar to the one against Olivet Nazarene. Schmitz used six pitchers during the victory with freshman Brian Long picking up his first career collegiate win.

“The key to our victory was how well we pitched,” Schmitz said. “We’ve been getting some good quality pitching right now and the guys are going in there and doing a pretty good job.”

With the Panthers struggling to find offense at the plate, Schmitz knows Eastern will have to do the little things like stolen bases, bunts and sacrifice flies to put runs on the scoreboard and win games.

“We need to do some good things like walks and moving runners, that’s what were going to have to do to win games in the OVC,” Schmitz said. “We don’t have a real offensive team so were going to have to move runners and get them in.”

The Panthers have not named their starters for this weekend but fans can expect to see six to eight pitchers on the mound for the three-game series this weekend.

“Chris [Vaculik] has been very good, Brian Long has been really good, it was good to get Ted Juske on the mound [Wednesday],” Schmitz said. “We got to get six or seven arms ready to go for the OVC play and I think we finally have that.”

The Panthers will play a double header Saturday with game one starting at 12 p.m. The series finale will take place on Sunday at 1 p.m.