The opening weekend of Ohio Valley Conference play did not go the way the Panthers wanted.

They dropped both of this past weekend’s matches, falling to Tennessee Tech in four games (31-29, 21-30, 25-30, 18-30) on Friday and then to Tennessee State in five games (32-30, 30-23, 28-30, 17-30, 13-15) on Saturday.

Both senior outside hitter Eliza Zwettler and junior middle hitter Lauren Sopcic agreed the team played well on Saturday, but they did not finish the match.

“We played pretty well, but it was disappointing to lose both matches,” Zwettler said.

In the third game of Saturday’s match, the Panthers lost by a slim margin (28-30), but were never able to get back the momentum.

Zwettler accounted this aspect to becoming to confident after winning the first two games.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I guess after we had won the first two games, we stopped playing as aggressive and thought we had already won. I think we started to overlook them.”

In the fifth game of the match, the Panthers were down 10-5, but they eventually were able to bring come back. Despite this, the team still lost 13-15.

The Panthers have been good in five game situations most of the season, but were not successful in finishing for the win this time.

Sopcic said although they lost, they are still a strong team that can win the fifth game when in the situation most times.

“Our ability to almost come back to win the fifth game when we were down shows we can execute in the fifth game,” Sopcic said. “We can play well as a team.”

Zwettler said one of the problems with the match against Tennessee State was that the game kept being slowed down by the opposing players complaining to the officials.

Zwettler said one of Tennessee State players got a yellow card by one of the down officials and said it motivated their team.

“We sat there waiting one time waiting for 30 seconds to get back to playing” Sopcic said. “It’s rough stopping the game all the time because we’re ready to play. But that was not a big factor in the match, we still should have got the job done.”

Regardless to winning, the Panthers were able to put up some good numbers during the weekend.

Eliza and her freshman sister Alex both had 16 kills against Tennessee Tech and Eliza had 24 kills, 13 digs against Tennessee State on Saturday, notching her 20th double-double of her career at Eastern.

Senior setter Maren Crabtree had 13 digs along with freshman outside hitter Kelsey Orr.

Both Zwettlers, Orr and Tennessee State’s Melissa Silva tied at four aces of the match.

The Panthers (7-4, 0-2 OVC) and will next host Southeast Missouri at 7 p.m. Tuesday in Lantz Arena.