There was somebody missing from Saturday’s postseason loss to Illinois State.

He is hardly an easy person to miss.

He is 6 foot, 6 inches tall and is the premier wide receiver in the Ohio Valley Conference.

During the regular season, Micah Rucker was the guy to go to when the running game didn’t work.

Heck, he was sometimes the guy the Panthers would go to when the running game was working.

Then you look at the statistics and see that he did not catch a pass Saturday.

How could that happen?

Naturally, the tendency is to give credit to the opposing defense. And there is some truth to the theory that a shutdown cornerback can give fits to any wide receiver.

But Rucker is not just any wide receiver. He made a name for himself by beating guys deep and catching balls that other wide receivers wouldn’t have caught.

There was a noticeable lack of down-the-field throws to Rucker in the game.

This was the year Eastern was going to move deep into the playoffs.

This was the year the Panthers offense had the talent to keep up with their dominating defense.

This was the year Eastern was going to throw the ball down the field if defenses keyed on its strong running game.

But it didn’t happen Saturday.

Vincent Webb Jr. was bottled up all game. He finished with just 54 yards rushing on 14 carries. Those things will happen.

ISU head coach Denver Johnson has said on more than one occasion that stopping a running back is a matter of committing to it.

If a team puts enough defenders near the line of scrimmage, sooner or later, an offense will run out of blockers.

That is what happened in the game against Webb and Norris Smith, two very talented running backs who have carried the Panthers offense several times this season.

The Panthers, however, failed to make any adjustments.

After Eastern’s Cole Stinson threw his first interception of the game – a pick in the end zone from 44 yards out on a pass to Ryan Voss – he seemed hesitant to throw the ball deep the rest of the game.

It was almost as if he was trying not to lose the game rather than trying to win the game.

It is not his strength. Stinson is not a game manager. He is a playmaker.

And his other playmaker, Rucker, was not turned to when he probably should have been.

While prevailing theory says that you don’t want to force a ball into coverage, sometimes you have to trust your wide receiver, especially when he has proven throughout the season that he can make a play on the ball.

And especially when nothing else is working out in the offensive game plan.