Last weekend, Eastern’s women’s soccer team lost a pair of Ohio Valley Conference matches to drop themselves from second place in the conference to a four-way tie for third in the OVC.

Obviously, two losses late in the conference schedule are never good, but these are extra crucial. Now it puts pressure on the Panthers to win going into the season-ending OVC tournament, not only for momentum, but to guarantee their spot among the top six teams in conference and a berth in the OVC tournament.

The Panthers are sitting in a four-way tie with Austin Peay, Tennessee-Martin and Murray State, with Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville sitting only one game back.

This sets up a simple scenario. If Eastern, who holds a tiebreaker over only Tennessee-Martin out of those teams, loses to the Cougars, the Panthers are out of the OVC tournament, barring a Tennessee-Martin loss or tie.

This situation also compounds the importance of the losses to Murray State and Austin Peay, which gives the Racers and Governors respective tiebreakers with Eastern if the three teams have the same outcome this weekend.

Forcing double overtime against Austin Peay was a major improvement over Friday’s 3-0 loss to Murray State, but a double overtime loss is still a loss, and in the tournament a loss is still a loss no matter the score or how many overtimes it goes to.

In the tournament, if you lose, you’re out and that’s that.

Confidence and momentum are two of the most overrated or underrated factors in all of sports, depending on who you ask. I think both are underrated, and a win this Sunday against Southern Illinois Edwardsville will do wonders for the Panthers’ momentum going into the OVC tournament.

The Cougars are 3-5 in their first season of OVC play, and the Panthers currently sit only one game better at 4-4 in conference.

To make this long story shorter, the losses last weekend have painted the Panthers into a must-win corner for the last conference weekend going into the tournament.

Granted, this will give the Panthers a feel of what the OVC tournament will feel like for if they get there. But just about any team would rather go into the end of the regular season with its playoff ticket punched, rather than still looking for that one last win to get into the postseason.

This Sunday, it will all boil down to one match; one win; one postseason berth.

Brad Kupiec can be reached at 581-7942 or bmkupiec@eiu.edu