The Eastern’s women’s basketball team had one of its first really tough tests Monday against Tennessee-Martin, last season’s conference tournament champion.

They passed the first test and will not see them again until the end of the regular season.

But even though they passed the test, there were stipulations on both sides that explain that this wasn’t a perfect game between the Ohio Valley Conference’s top teams.

First on Eastern’s side, junior forward Mariah King didn’t have a good game; in fact, she didn’t score a single point.

Now, this Tennessee-Martin team is not a low post dominating team in any stretch – a load of its points come from the guards – but King was still shut down.

Whether it just wasn’t her night or the stars weren’t aligned right, we don’t quite know.

We do know that Eastern finally got a much-needed lift off the bench from players like Jordyne Crunk, Sabina Oroszova, Katlyn Payne and Jessica Parker.

Crunk scored 15 points in the game and, boy, we’ve all been waiting for her to come out and impress like she did during the second half of last season.

For Tennessee-Martin, Monday’s game wasn’t a perfect game either. One of their top scorers, Jasmine Newsome, had a bad game and didn’t pitch in her usual 19 points per game. Instead, she scored only 12.

Newsome has been a menace since she’s been at Tennessee-Martin – now only a sophomore.

Her partner in crime, Heather Butler, had a big game as usual.

One thing that Eastern head coach Brady Sallee said after Monday’s game caught me off guard because I hadn’t been thinking about it.

Tennessee-Martin scored 40 points in the second half compared to only 23 in the first half. The second half was, as Sallee said, what he expected.

He said he expected to have to play against Tennessee-Martin’s second half performance for a whole game. Simply, they were supposed to play that way the whole game.

So they were off their game for whatever reason. Certainly Eastern had a lot to do with it, especially being at home.

Panthers were racing all over the floor, diving for loose balls, playing tough defense, and pushing Tennessee-Martin to the brink.

So while we look back at this premiere match-up, we can learn a lot of things from it.

No matter who has an off game for either team, both teams are so deep and so talented that others will step up and it will be a really good game.

By the schedule, these two teams meet one more time this season.

But let’s not forget about Nashville, where the OVC tournament is. Tennessee-Martin will look to defend their title. Eastern will look to get that long awaited title. Can’t wait.