Maren Crabtree served the ball straight into the net.

On the next play, Tennessee-Martin’s Kathryn Sprague and Taylor Noland assisted on a block of a kill attempt by Eastern’s Caitlin Balsam.

UTM’s next serve by Jamie Hollins found a hole in the middle of Eastern’s defense and landed on the court in front of Balsam, giving the Skyhawks a 25-19 lead in the fourth game of Saturday’s match at Lantz Arena.

The sequence showed the difference in the match as the Panthers lost to UTM in four games.

“(Head coach Amy) Draper’s philosophy is serve for ace or don’t serve,” said Tennessee-Martin’s junior libero Anna Gautrau. “Every time we step back there, we serve for ace.”

The Skyhawks had plenty of those.

They finished the match with 10 service aces and the Panthers committed 13 service errors.

That tied for the most service errors Eastern has had this season.

They also committed 13 errors Tuesday against Illinois-Chicago.

It is a problem that has started just recently, said Panthers’ head coach Lori Bennett.

“(The service game) has been our strength and allowed us to be pretty good defensively and offensively,” she said. “But it’s been nonexistent for the last couple of days.”

Eastern lost to Murray State in four games Friday.

The Panthers (5-8, 0-2 Ohio Valley Conference) struggled to get any lengthy scoring runs for the second straight match Saturday, partially because of the problems serving the ball consistently.

“It just kind of kills the momentum,” said senior outside hitter Mary Welch. “But we just need to learn to pick it up and get it right back, right away. If someone goes for and gets an awesome dig and somebody hits it into the net, those are the type of errors that we just need to improve on.”

The Panthers split the first two games and were in good shape midway through the third game. A kill by Welch brought Eastern to within a point at 15-14.

But their serving problem slowed their rally.

Back-to-back service errors by freshman libero Shaina Boylan and senior outside hitter Kara Sorenson helped the Skyhawks extend their lead to 20-15.

Eastern committed three more service errors in a game UTM won 30-26.

“(The service errors) always seem to come at the worst times and back-to-back,” Bennett said. “Strings of errors are killing us right now.”

The Skyhawks then won the final game 30-21 by relying on another one of their strengths, the blocking game.

UTM, the conference’s leader in blocks, recorded five in the fourth game.

Draper mentioned the blocking during the break between the second and third games.

“Our blockers did a great job of coming back in the fourth game and they made big adjustments,” she said. “We dominated at the net.”

Balsam said the Panthers couldn’t finish as well as they would have liked.

“When we’re in the 20s, we just start making error after error,” she said. “Instead of pushing forward, we’re just making mistakes. Silly mistakes that we shouldn’t make.”