After the Eastern football team completed a 31-0 shutout victory against Indiana State Saturday in Terre Haute, Ind., offensive coordinator Roy Wittke was asked how he viewed his unit’s performance.

“Inconsistent,” Wittke said. “A little bit sloppy. Penalties really hurt us.

Besides the first drive, we could never get into a rhythm.”

Wait, what?

That’s not exactly the reaction you would expect from the coach of a unit that scored 31 points in consecutive weeks.

But those words adequately sum up the feelings of a Panther squad not nearly satisfied with two consecutive dominant performances to start the season.

“These last two games, Illinois State and Indiana State, are teams that are in the process of developing their programs again,” Eastern head coach Bob Spoo said.

“We’re playing against teams that don’t have quite the experience that the teams we’re going to be playing in the next couple of weeks will have.

“Both (Southeast Missouri) and Austin Peay are teams that were young a few years ago, but are now of age. These next couple of games are going to be a lot tougher than these first two.”

What Spoo is saying, and what many Eastern players acknowledged after the victory, is the Panthers are going to have to correct a number of mistakes to win once they begin Ohio Valley Conference play, which starts next week. Committing 10 penalties for 78 yards may be OK when you’re facing a team that hasn’t won in nearly three years.

But that won’t do the job in Cape Girardeau, Mo., and Clarksville, Tenn., which are the Panthers next two destinations.

“We made a lot of mistakes,” senior center Chaz Millard said. “We need to clean up a lot of those penalties.”

The good thing for the Panthers is the mistakes came against a miserable Sycamores team.

Additionally, all the mistakes that plagued the Panthers were not physical limitations, but rather mental errors that can be corrected.

In all, the Panthers committed seven penalties on offense.

Five were for holding, one was for an illegal block in the back and one was a personal foul on junior running back Chevon Walker, who hit an Indiana State defender after the whistle blew following a seven-yard run.

So while the 2-0 start is what the Panthers hoped to be at after the first two weeks, they are well aware of the changes they need to make to be successful the rest of the season.

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