The Eastern football team came into Thursday’s game against Tennessee State with aspirations of an outright Ohio Valley Conference Championship.

The Tigers defense had other plans.

Tennessee State limited the No. 13 Panthers to 10 points, 245 yards of total offense and forced four Eastern turnovers in the 21-10 loss at O’Brien Field.

“We knew they were going to shift a lot,” Tennessee State sophomore linebacker Rico Council said. “We knew they were going to try to stick it to us with the outside and inside zone. We see that everyday in practice so we knew what we were doing and we were able to stop it.”

The Panthers were held to 96 rushing yards on the night, with 28 rushing yards coming from scrambles by Eastern senior quarterback Jake Christiansen.

Junior running back Mon Williams led the team with 39 rushing yards.

After scoring 49 points against Tennessee Martin last week, the Panthers were limited to one second half touchdown when junior wide receiver Charles Graves scored with 10 minutes, 11 seconds remaining in the fourth quarter.

“Their defense was really outstanding,” Eastern head coach Bob Spoo said. “Their team did a great job. Their coaches did a great job. The whole works.”

Council said the key to the Tigers defense was limiting the Panthers rushing attack.

“We stopped the run,” Council said. “We stopped the run. That’s key. Once you stop the run there’s not a lot of things teams can do to you.”

The game was low scoring in the first half as the only score came on a field goal by senior kicker Austin Signor with 2:23 remaining in the second quarter.

In the second half, the Tigers were able to score three times to put the game away.

After Christensen’s best game of the season last week when he threw for 322 yards on 18-of-21 passing with four touchdowns, he had trouble finding receivers finishing 12-of-32 with three interceptions against the Tigers.

Senior cornerback Ty’Ron Johnson led the Tigers with five tackles and picked two of Christensen’s passes. Council wrestled the ball away from an Eastern receiver late in the fourth quarter to crush the Panthers’ comeback and give the Tigers the ball back with 6:31 remaining in the game.

“Our passing game was woeful today for the most part,” Spoo said. “They came after us. I don’t think we protected well. (Christensen) had to scramble a number of times. They outplayed us. That happens.”

After the game, Tennessee State coach James Webster announced to his team at the 50-yard line of O’Brien Stadium that he was resigning as head coach of Tennessee State. He said it was a tough decision because this is a young team that has so much talent.

“(The players took the announcement) hard,” Webster said. “(The kids) played hard tonight. They played hard all year we just had some things happen that we did not have control of. That happened to us all year. They’re a good football team, They’re a young football team.”

Dan Cusack can be reached at 581-7944 or dscusack@eiu.edu.