Eastern Illinois still has a chance to qualify for the Ohio Valley Conference Tournament.

But Eastern, the last-place team in the 11-team conference will need help from other teams in order to make the eight-team tournament.

Eastern is 4-13 in the OVC and has three conference games left, starting with tonight’s game against Southeast Missouri.

The best possible scenario for Eastern to qualify for the tournament is to win its last three games and have a multitude of factors happen.

Tennessee State has to lose its final three conference games.

The Panthers also need to have ninth-place Jacksonville State (5-11 OVC) finish with six conference wins and tenth-place Tennessee-Martin (5-13) to also finish with fewer than seven conference wins.

Eastern also needs Morehead State (6-10) to finish with seven conference wins.

Scenario No. 1: Five teams finish at 7-13

If Eastern finishes at 7-13 and JSU, Morehead, TSU and UT-Martin also finish at 7-13, TSU would knock out Eastern because of head-to-head match up.

TSU has beaten the Panthers twice already this season. Eastern has split with Morehead and UT-Martin, and has not played JSU a second time yet.

If there’s a two-way tie and head-to-head match ups don’t negate the tie, the two tied teams use their head-to-head record against the top team in the conference.

For example, if UTM and Eastern finished at 7-13, the head-to-head match up would be negated because the teams split in their two games this year.

Their records against first-place Austin Peay would then be compared and if that doesn’t break the tie, the head-to-head records against the next best team would be compared and so forth until the tie is broken.

Scenario No. 2: Eastern and Morehead are the only teams to finish at 7-13

This is the most favorable scenario for Eastern to qualify.

However, Morehead needs to win its seventh conference game against Tennessee State on Feb. 24 in order for this scenario to take place.

This is because if TSU comes into the game 6-13 in conference and Eastern is also 6-13 heading into its game at Samford on the same day, an Eastern win and a TSU win, because of its two head-to-head wins against the Panthers, would eliminate Eastern.

However, if Morehead beats TSU and Eastern ends up beating Samford, Eastern and Morehead would finish 7-13.

The head-to-head tiebreaking solution would not work in this instance since Eastern split with Morehead this season.

The tiebreaker would then go to both teams did against the first-place team. In this instance, Morehead and Eastern’s records against first place Austin Peay would be compared.

But, Morehead and Eastern lost its games to Austin Peay this season. It would then fall to the second-place team. Right now, that’s Samford. Morehead and Eastern lost to Samford in its first meeting with the Bulldogs, but the Eagles and the Panthers haven’t played Samford for a second time yet.

Morehead hosts Samford Thursday and Eastern travels there for a Feb. 24 game.

If that situation arises and the tie is still not broken, the situation continues onto the third-place team and so forth until the tie is broken.

Scenario No. 3: Eastern finishes 6-14

This would eliminate the Panthers from the conference tournament because even if TSU, JSU and UTM finish at 6-14, Eastern would knock out of the tournament because TSU owns the head-to-head tiebreaker against Eastern.

Team reacts to tournament situation

Eastern head coach Mike Miller said Saturday he hasn’t brought up the topic of the postseason tournament to his team.

“I don’t know if we’ve talked about it the whole year,” he said. “The only thing that we talked about was let’s make sure our team gets better every day. If you do that, you’re going to be where you need to be.”

Sophomore point guard Mike Robinson said it’s Eastern’s own fault it’s in this situation.

“It wasn’t somebody else’s fault that we’re in this position,” he said. “When we go out there, our jerseys say Eastern Illinois so we put ourselves in this position.”

Robinson’s steal total increases

Robinson needs 17 more steals in the final four regular-season games to tie Eastern’s single-season record.

Robinson has 63 steals on the year, and needs to average 4.25 in the final four games to tie Troy Richardson’s record of 80 steals in the 1984-85 season.

If Robinson keeps up the pace he established in Eastern’s last two games, he will tie the record.

He recorded four steals in Thursday’s loss at Austin Peay and had five steals in Saturday’s win against Tennessee-Martin.

Tonight’s game has earlier start

Eastern hosts Southeast Missouri at 6 tonight because ESPN U is televising it. Normal tip-off times for night games are 7:35.