This past weekend, the Panther baseball team lost all three games of their opening weekend set against Southern Mississippi.

The Panthers had a tough time in several areas, but one area that stood out was their poor defense. In Sunday’s contest, the Panthers committed three errors against the Golden Eagles, leading to Southern Miss scoring half of their six runs unearned, as well as five runs out of 21 unearned for the weekend.

If the Panthers are going to improve from this weekend and move forward to become a force in the OVC, they will need to improve their defense, especially.

Any die-hard baseball fan, player, or coach will tell you that probably the most important thing for any team to have is a solid defense.

The Panthers had their share of issues with defense last season, and this season seems to have gotten off on the wrong foot as well, as far as defense goes.

None of this is to say that offense and pitching aren’t key components in a good baseball team, but without defense, none of it matters. Excluding strikeouts, pitchers need their defense to make plays behind them to get out of innings. And it doesn’t matter how many runs a player drives in on offense, if he goes out in the field and commits an error that allows three runs to score, his two-run double becomes a moot point.

If you can’t play defense, you cannot win a baseball game. It’s that simple.

If the Panthers can turn this around and start playing some better, more consistent defense as the season progresses, it will only bode well for their chances in the Ohio Valley Conference. If not, I would guess they won’t have very fun practices until they start playing better behind their pitching staff.

Now I’ve never been a high-level baseball player, or any kind of athlete, but defense just seems to me like one of those things teams should practice so often it becomes second nature, like a basketball player shooting a free-throw, or a tennis player hitting a serve.

So, to make a long story short, the Panthers need to play better defense in the future than they did this weekend in Hattiesburg, Miss., or they will be in for a long season.

Brad Kupiec can be reached at 581-7944 or bmkupiec@eiu.edu