Update: 3/7 – 6:47 P.M.

Complete and utter shock.

The Eastern women’s basketball team was stunned by fifth-seeded Austin Peay 69-65 in double overtime Saturday afternoon in the championship game of the Ohio Valley Conference Tournament at the Sommet Center in Nashville, Tenn.

The loss ended Eastern’s season one game short of an NCAA Tournament bid for the second consecutive year.

“It just wasn’t our day,” senior forward Lindsey Kluempers said after the loss. “They made more plays than us.”

The second-seeded Panthers trailed by four with 38 seconds left in regulation before tying the game with 11.4 seconds left to send it into overtime. Similarly, the Panthers led by four with just mpre than a minute to play in the first overtime before surrendering the lead with under a minute to go.

In the double-overtime period it was all Lady Govs, led by freshman guard Emily Pollock, who began the period with a layup and a 3-pointer to key Austin Peay’s run.

The Lady Govs (17-15) increased the lead to as many as 10 points with 1:05 remaining.

She also had five steals in the game, including one with just under a minute left in regulation that led to an open layup to tie the game.

“She’s just a bundle of energy for them and played her tail off,” Eastern head coach Brady Sallee said. “She’s a tough kid and made some big plays for them. She hit a very uncharacteristic three for them there in the second overtime that really helped them explode a little bit and open it up a little bit.”

Turnovers plagued the Panthers (24-9) throughout the game, as they finished with a season-high 25. Senior guard Ellen Canale and red-shirt junior guard Dominique Sims combined for 15 turnovers.

“We ran into a hot basketball team that had a lot of confidencem and they played like it tonight,” Sallee said. “I’m very proud of my kids’ effort. Their heart, their determination. If we take a little bit better care of the ball and there’s not an 18-free throw attempt discrepancy things might’ve been different.”

Eastern senior forward Rachel Galligan led the charge for Eastern with 24 points on 12-of-15 shooting in 42 minutes. She also had four blocks in the game and was named to the All-Tournament team. No other Panther scored in double-figures, but senior guard Megan Edwards had nine points and eight assists in a career-high 48 minutes.

The Lady Govs were led by sophomore guard Ashley Herring and senior forward April Thomas, offensively. Herring finished with 21 points while Thomas added 13 and eight rebounds.

Herring, Thomas and Pollock were all named to the All-Tournament team and Thomas was named the tournament’s Most Valuable Player.

While the Panthers dreams of an NCAA Tournament bid are over, they still have an outside shot at an invitation to the postseason NIT, which is a 48-team tournament that begins March 18. The tournament’s selection day is March 16.

Collin Whitchurch can be reached at 581-7944 or cfwhitchurch@eiu.edu.

Championship Game Preview

The team the Eastern women’s basketball team will face for the Ohio Valley Conference Tournament Title today is not its arch-rival who has defeated then four consecutive times, including in the OVC Title game a year ago.

No, Austin Peay is not Murray State. In fact, the Lady Govs instead eliminated the Racers squad that has proven to be the Panthers’ kryptonite in the past two years.

But that doesn’t make today’s title game any less meaningful to the Panthers who play at 3 p.m. today at the Sommet Center in Nashville, Tenn.

“Honestly, we came into this and I didn’t care if the (Los Angeles) Lakers were out on the floor, we were going to come to play,” Eastern head coach Brady Sallee said after his team’s 64-48 semifinals victory against Tennessee State Friday. “We’ve got a goal and we’re very focused on doing what we want to do.”

The Panthers (24-8) are looking to gain an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 1988. But to do so they must get past a Lady Govs squad that put up 90 points on the No. 1 Racers Friday.

While Eastern defeated Austin Peay in both of their meetings this season – including a 69-56 victory in Clarksville, Tenn., only nine days ago – Sallee saw what the Lady Govs (16-15) did to the Racers today and does not plan on his team taking them lightly in the championship game.

“Clearly they can fill it up,” he said. “You see what they did offensively against Murray State, to outscore Murray State in that game, it was just two offensive teams putting the ball in the basket and that scares the tar out of me.”

Senior forward April Thomas and sophomore guard Ashley Herring lead the charge offensively for the Lady Govs. Thomas scored a career-high 25 points in the victory over Murray State and Herring, well, Sallee knows how dangerous she can be.

“The first time we played them she had 306 points in one game. She set a new NCAA record,” Sallee said jokingly. “In my opinion she is one of the top three or four players in this league and so we’ve got our hands full with her.”

It is clear that regardless of who the opponent is, the Panthers are going to be prepared. They’ve been in this situation before and tasted defeat, losing to Murray State in the championship one year ago. They spoke all season about getting to this point and capitalizing on it, and now they have their chance.

“We’re much more focused on being who we are than maybe necessarily who we’re playing,” Sallee said. “We’ve got a lot of respect for Austin Peay and we’re going to go out there and give it everything we’ve got.”

Check out dennews.com for a live blog from the championship game.

3/6 Coverage:

Women’s basketball advances to tourney title game

The opponent isn’t who they expected, but the Eastern women’s basketball team doesn’t care.

The Panthers advanced to the championship game of the Ohio Valley Conference Tournament for the second-consecutive year with a 64-48 victory against Tennessee State Friday at the Sommet Center in Nashville, Tenn.

Eastern will face fifth-seeded Austin Peay at 3 p.m. tomorrow. The Lady Govs upset top-seeded Murray State 90-84 earlier in the day to advance to the title game.

After a sloppy first half that saw red-shirt junior guard Dominique Sims and senior guard Ellen Canale sitting with foul trouble for most of the half, in the second half it was the Rachel Galligan show for Eastern, and for the Lady Tigers it probably felt like a rerun. Six days after putting up 19 second half points in the Panthers’ win against Tennessee State in Nashville, Galligan scored 19 of her 25 points in the second half to propel the team to the finals once again.

“In that first half you really saw me hanging on for dear life,” Eastern head coach Brady Sallee said. “We had two struggling players sitting on the bench with foul trouble and I think that allowed them to guard (Galligan) with just about five players.

“But as long as I’m coaching this one (Galligan), I know what’s coming. She just played like a warrior and that’s what she’s done all year. We needed that toughness tonight.”

Eastern lost to Murray State in the championship game a year ago.

In the second half it was business-as-usual for the Panthers as they took a back-and-forth game early on and turned it into a blowout. Tennessee State head coach Tracee Wells said her game plan was to pressure the basketball as much as possible on defense in order to give Eastern (24-8) less time to get the ball to Galligan.

“Our post players were trying to stay in front of her to make it difficult, and for about 25-30 minutes we did a good job of that,” Wells said. “Towards the end of the second half we started to let up a bit and she’s a good player, she’s going to go to work when you mess it up and she did catch us on that a few times.”

The first half ended in a tie at 24 against the Lady Tigers (18-13), and Sallee said he considered his team lucky to escape the first half that way. In the second half Eastern shot 51.9 percent from the field and only committed four turnovers which aided in their ability to pull away.

“I told our team before the game ‘Just go be who you’ve been all year,’ and that’s what we did,” Sallee said. “We’ve been a team that defends, we’ve been a team that does a pretty good job rebounding the ball and here of late we’ve taken care of the basketball and I think those were the big three keys against an extremely explosive, well-coached basketball team in Tennessee State.”

The Panthers had 17 assists on their 22 field goals, won the rebounding battle 38-36, and turned the ball over only 13 times – four in the second half.

Junior guard Ashley Thomas – playing in her first extended action since returning from a back injury Feb. 28 – finished with 12 points and six rebounds in 26 minutes.

Sallee said getting Thomas back into the full swing of things was a real benefit.

“It feels great to be back in the mix,” Thomas said. “I don’t mind getting bumped around as long as I’m out there helping my team, that’s all that really matters.

Senior guard Megan Edwards rounded out three Panthers to score in double-figures with 15 points. She also had a game-high seven assists in 38 minutes of action.

Semifinal One: No. 5 Austin Peay 90, No. 1 Murray State 84

Fifth-seeded Austin Peay advanced to the finals of the Ohio Valley Conference Tournament Friday with a 90-84 victory against No. 1 Murray State in the Sommet Center in Nashville, Tenn.

Austin Peay will play the winner of third-seeded Tennessee State and second-seeded Eastern at 3 p.m. today.

The Lady Govs were led by senior forward April Thomas, who scored 25 points on 11-of-15 shooting. Five players scored in double figures for the Lady Govs (16-15).

The Racers (22-8) got a combined 79 points

out of their big-three of senior guard Amber Guffey, Paige Guffey and Ashley Hayes.

However, Murray State got virtually no production out of any other player, as the entire rest of the team combined for five points.

This is the second year in a row that the league’s top seed got upset in the semifinals. Last season, fourth-seed Eastern defeated top-seeded Southeast Missouri in the semifinals.

Collin Whitchurch can be reached at 581-7944 or cfwhitchurch@eiu.edu.

Eastern senior forward Rachel Galligan is comforted by head coach Brady Sallee after their crushing defeat against fifth-seeded Austin Peay in Nashville on Saturday. (Eric Hiltner/The Daily Eastern News)

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An Eastern fan clinches his face after Eastern’s crushing defeat against fifth-seeded Austin Peay on Saturday in Nashville. (Alycia Rockey/The Daily Eastern News)

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