Eastern had just broken a 13-game losing streak Friday night, sweeping Samford 3-0. Jacksonville State then showed why they are the first-place team in the Ohio Valley Conference and stopped any hopes of a Homecoming sweep.

The Panthers were swept 3-0 Saturday at Lantz Arena by the scores of 30-22, 30-21 and 30-19, with the Gamecocks being led by junior outside hitter Abbey Breit.

“You don’t really stop her ever; you just hope to contain her a little bit,” said Eastern head coach Lori Bennett about the 2005 OVC Player of the Year.

Breit, who had 19 kills on the night, confused the Panthers all night with different places to hit the ball.

“Well, she’s the best player in the conference, and she finds a way to win,” Bennett said. “You can dig her cross-court and she hits the cut-back. She has every shot, every trick in the book, and she will pull them out as necessary.”

JSU head coach Rick Nold said that even though Breit and senior middle hitter Shari Weyer had a majority of the kills, they help free the other teammates to attack.

“I think we were swinging pretty well, and the thing we were trying to do was spread it around to everybody,” Nold said. “That kind of keeps the other team off-balance, and I thought we did a pretty good job with that.”

While being able to keep right up with the Gamecocks during the early and middle part of all three games, the Panthers could never capitalize and take a lead.

In all three games, the Gamecocks were able to go on a run late to win each game.

“It (the runs) was all the team attitude,” Breit said. “When we are playing our best, it’s when we have a certain attitude, mentality of confidence and of unity.”

The Gamecocks had good attitude, Bennett said, but she attributed JSU’s win more to Eastern’s serving, passing and hitting errors.

On the night, Eastern had 16 attack errors and nine service errors.

Freshman setter Lauren Schutte said some service errors are expected to happen with fiercer serving.

“We were serving really aggressive, so sometimes that (errors) happen when you’re serving aggressive,” Schutte said.

Schutte, who started both games this weekend, replaced junior setter Maren Crabtree for the third game in a row.

“We’ve had a higher hitting percentage with her (Schutte),” Bennett said.