The Eastern men’s basketball team couldn’t hang on to a one point lead with six minutes remaining Thursday as it gave up 11 unanswered points to Tennessee Tech and ending the game with a 75-65 loss.

The Panthers held a 29-26 lead at halftime, but were outscored 49-36 in the second half although they had extended their halftime lead to 38-32 early in the second half.

Eastern head coach Mike Miller said in his postgame interview on WEIU-FM that once Eastern got that lead, it needed to keep scoring and extend its lead, but the Panthers couldn’t and they let Tech back into it, giving up the lead with under 14 minutes left.

“We lost our composure for a time there in the second half when we should’ve tried to extend our lead, but we let them get back into it,” Miller said.

The Golden Eagles had four players reach double figures, including junior forward Alfred Jones who scored 16 points while shooting 6-of-8 from the field.

“Jones was very efficient in the way he was shooting the ball and he played well,” Miller said.

One of the players Miller was focused on from Tech was senior guard Frank Davis who scored 12 points and eclipsed the 1,000-point milestone for his career.

After the Golden Eagles took a 41-38 lead, the game stayed close as no team had bigger than a three-point lead until the four-minute mark.

With 4:09 left in the game, Tech took a four-point lead after sophomore guard Zach Bailey sank a three-pointer.

The Golden Eagles’ leading scorer was senior guard Elijah Muhammad, who sank another three-point jumper to extend the lead to seven. From there, the Panthers couldn’t get the game back within their reach.

“We didn’t have enough answers for them,” Miller said. “We just had too many breakdowns and didn’t play well down the stretch.”

Muhammad stole the ball from sophomore guard Jeremy Granger with 2:24 left and sprinted down the court for a lay-up.

After a Granger foul with 1:42 to go in the game, Muhammad extended Tech’s lead to 10 points and Eastern never got the lead back to single digits.

“I was disappointed with our execution,” Miller said. “When we needed to execute, we couldn’t.

Granger ended the game as Eastern’s leading scorer, tallying 16 points, while senior guard T.J Marion scored 12 and junior guard Tyler Laser added 10.

Eastern shot 48 percent from the field but was stalled by a poor shooting night from beyond the arc. The Panthers finished the game shooting 29 percent from three-point range.

The loss is Eastern’s fifth consecutive road loss, after it had started the season 5-1 in its first six road contests.

The loss also makes the Panthers overall record 11-10, with a losing record of 5-6 in the Ohio Valley Conference.

The Panthers play Jacksonville State at 4:30 p.m. Saturday in Jacksonville, Ala.

Alex McNamee can be reached at 581-7944 or admcnamee@eiu.edu.

Sophomore guard Jeremy Granger looks for an open teammate against Tennessee-Martin Saturday in Lantz Arena. The Panthers faced Tennessee Tech on Thursday evening and lost 75-65. This Saturday Eastern will play against Jacksonville State in Jacksonville, A

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