Eastern knows a second straight season of missing the Ohio Valley Conference Tournament is quickly becoming a reality.

“We’ve certainly put ourselves in a difficult situation,” Eastern head coach Mike Miller said. “Our backs are against the wall.”

The Panthers (5-14, 1-9 OVC) currently sit in last place in the conference and are four games behind eighth place Southeast Missouri.

However, with a home game tonight at Lantz Arena versus Tennessee Tech (8-9, 4-4), Miller is trying to find one game where they put all phases together.

“Our biggest concern right now is Eastern Illinois playing more consistent basketball just to give ourselves a chance,” Miller said. “We can’t be real concerned with a lot of other things right now.”

Eastern’s only conference win occurred in the previous calendar year (Dec. 7), came against the same Golden Eagles team but feels like more than a memory.

“I’m sure that they’re different today than what they were in the early part of December,” Miller said. “Their experiences have advanced their team.”

Tennessee Tech is coming to Charleston after compiling two home victories last week against Jacksonville State and Samford to seemingly turn its season around.

“We had two big wins this week,” said Tennessee Tech coach Mike Sutton. “We’re hopefully improving our basketball team. We’ve still got a long ways to go.”

The TTU backcourt tandem of Belton Rivers (18.9 points per game) and Anthony Fisher (17.8 ppg) are two of the top three scorers in the league for a team that leads the conference in scoring average (75.9 ppg).

“Belton and Anthony have had pretty good seasons, not as good as I would have hoped for them to have because they certainly had some shortcomings in areas that we’ve been working on,” Sutton said.

Rivers and Fisher combined for 30 points in the first meeting with the Panthers but shot only three of 18 from three-point range in the first meeting.

“I don’t think you can stop those guys. I think you have to try to contain them the best you can,” Miller said. “(When) we played them I believe in the first game their inside guys played really well.’

Tennessee Tech is trying to replicate the recent success Tennessee-Martin and Eastern Kentucky had in slowing down Eastern’s leading scorer, freshman Romain Martin. In Martin’s first 17 games, he averaged a team-high 15 points but has combined for that total in his last two appearances.

“I don’t think anybody depends on one guy,” Miller said. “You look across the OVC, just looking at our league, there aren’t any teams out there that are just really playing off one guy.”