This is the hard part. February is gut-check time for Ohio Valley Conference teams. It is a month teams use to prove whether or not they are capable of doing big things come March and the OVC tournament.

For the Eastern women’s basketball team, the situation prior to this month did not look too impressive.

Now, things have turned completely around. In February, the Panthers are 4-0, and if you count Jan. 29, their last game in January, they are undefeated in their last five games.

They have gone from a few games back of fourth place at the end of January, to fourth place by Valentine’s Day.

Even more important, the Panthers are within striking distance of the teams in front of them.

The No. 1 seed in the league right now is Tennessee Tech, which swept Eastern in its two games against them this season. Tech is only three games ahead of Eastern with four to go.

Morehead State is in third place (one game ahead of Eastern) and Tennessee-Martin is in second place (two games ahead of Eastern).

One important thing happened thing happened this weekend in terms of the standings.

Eastern beat Morehead. This means the season series is split 1-1. This means that neither team owns a tiebreaker over the other.

Coming up Thursday is maybe the Panthers’ biggest game left in the season – Tennessee-Martin comes to town.

Already this season, the Panthers lost by only two points to Tennessee-Martin, and now the Panthers get another shot.

This will be a big game to win at home because it could potentially result in passing Morehead in the standings and inching closer to UT Martin.

As they stand right now, Eastern is a very hot team. They are starting to gain confidence. They are starting to feed the paint (Mariah King) and play inside out.

King is dominating right now in the middle and all of the other players are following suit.

Right now, the Panthers are in position to have a first round bye in the tournament, meaning the field would be shrunk for them and the other three teams with byes. The higher you are seeded, the fewer games you have to play.

This year, the tournament works so the top two teams get the first two rounds as bye and the third and fourth seeds get one round bye.

Ta’Kenya Nixon and Kelsey Wyss have already thrown aside the notion that this Panther team needs a bye.

Wyss said the team is really confident right now, so it wouldn’t matter.

Nixon said a bye would only be a product of how the team has played, but it would not be necessary to attain.

This is a confident team, the Panthers. They are starting to click. They are getting healthy at the right time. They are running the offense well and they are crashing the boards like beasts.

The Panther have a chance to be undefeated in February, but some good opponents in the last four games will test them.

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