The Eastern women’s basketball team took 19 three-point shots Saturday in a winning effort against Jacksonville State.

But its coach was not happy with his team taking the second highest amount of threes this season.

The Panthers made 6-of-19 shots from the beyond the arc, including 4-of-8 in the first half.

Eight shots were too many in one half, so at halftime head coach Brady Sallee told his team that he wanted them to get back to playing Eastern basketball, freshman guard Ta’Kenya Nixon said.

The shots went the opposite way in the second half as the Panthers shot 2-of-11 from three-point range.

“Even though they were open shots, I think we settled for a lot of jump shots,” Sallee said.

Sallee said he expected his team to exploit an advantage they had in the post and feed the ball into senior forward Maggie Kloak and the rest of the team’s forwards.

“We took too many (threes) when clearly we had our way in the post with what Maggie did,” Sallee said. “We just didn’t throw it in there enough.”

Eastern’s forwards had the advantage during the entire month of January, as Kloak shot 50 percent from the field that month. Freshman forward Mariah King shot 58 percent.

The Panthers won the game 60-43, never trailing and leading by 22 points with just over five minutes left in regulation.

Still, after the win Sallee said he was not happy with his team’s offensive decision making.

“I wasn’t real thrilled with the amount of jump shots we took, especially from a couple positions, so we’ll go to work on that and we’ll have to understand the difference between getting our shots and taking any shots,” Sallee said.

Empty gym affects team

A total of 444 fans showed up in Jacksonville, Ala. Saturday to watch the women’s basketball game, but it was not enough.

When the Panthers go on the road, they are going into arenas expecting 823 fans in the stands on average; however, they were only in front of nearly half that amount of fans.

Eastern dominated the Gamecocks in a 60-43 win but Sallee said the game was played at a slow pace, which is something that the Panthers are not used to.

“The game was played pretty slow and it was an empty gym, which is a really tough environment to play in because it was so empty,” Sallee said. “I thought our kids handled it pretty well.”

Undefeated New Year

At the tail end of the year 2009, Eastern had a 1-1 Ohio Valley Conference record; now, the Panthers have a 10-1 record and are in first place in the OVC.

So far, 2010 has been a good year for the women’s basketball team as it is 9-0, undefeated over the span of one month for the first time since December 2007.

The month of January also featured a switch among Eastern’s leading scorers during the month as Kloak led the way for the Panthers, averaging 13.4 points per game.

Nixon was the team’s second leading scorer in January and is the team’s leading scorer this season averaging 13 ppg (12.9 in January).

Senior guard Dominique Sims came in the third place spot of Eastern’s top scorers, averaging 11.8 ppg, although she reached a career-high 21 points last Thursday.

With nine wins in a row, the Panthers have tied the program record as members of Division-I.

As a member of any division, Eastern’s longest win streak is 12, which could be taken down on Feb. 13 against Eastern Kentucky at home.

The Panthers will go after their 10th consecutive win Thursday against Southern Illinois-Edwardsville at 7 p.m. in Edwardsville.

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

Freshman guard Kelsey Wyss turns to take a shot against Tennessee Martin on Jan. 23 in Lantz Arena. Wyss finished with three points and five rebounds as the Panthers won 74-47.(Audrey Sawyer/The Daily Eastern News)

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