The final buzzer sounded on the Eastern’s women’s basketball team’s 52-51 win over Tennessee Tech on Monday, and Eastern head coach Brady Sallee looked back at his team on the bench ecstatic, pumping his fists.

After losing Saturday against Tennessee-Martin on the road, his team pulled out a one-point victory over Tennessee Tech in Cooksville, Tenn.

“This summer, when the schedule came out, I knew what this road trip was going to be,” Sallee said. “To get a split and play as hard as we did in a grind-it-out game, that was my reaction.”

Eastern pulled out the one-point win with its defensive focus on the last play of the game. Eastern led by one with 3.9 seconds to play as Tennessee Tech was preparing to inbounds under their basket after a timeout.

Sallee played a cat-and-mouse game, waiting to see what set Tennessee Tech was going to come out in. Then, he called a timeout.

Sallee said he talked with his team about the set Tennessee Tech was playing in and how to defend it, but when the two teams came back onto the court Tennessee Tech had changed it up.

On the inbounds pass, Eastern was able to knock the ball out of bounds leaving 3.3 seconds to play. Then, Tennessee Tech switched back to the set Sallee had planned for.

“We really, really executed the defense well,” Sallee said. “They switched back and our team saw it and I was shouting at them.”

The inbounds pass ended up in the hands of Eastern junior guard Ta’Kenya Nixon, who then turned around and ran down the court until the buzzer sounded.

The Panthers had to battle back into the game trailing by 10 points with 13:50 to go in the second half. They did so with a handful of big defensive stops and clutch offensive shots.

Eastern shrank the deficit to six points with less than seven minutes to play. They followed it up by getting two back-to-back three pointers by senior forward Chantelle Pressley and red-shirt freshman guard Katlyn Payne.

“They were in a zone and I can’t fault them for it,” Sallee said. “Katlyn hit a big three and Chantelle hit a huge three.”

Then, when it was time to win, Nixon hit a jump shot with 1:27 to play to bring the game within one point and followed it with a layup at the 56-second mark to give the Panthers a lead.

“She got that look in her eye as she has so many times in her career when it was winning time,” Sallee said.

After losing Saturday in overtime to Tennessee-Martin, Sallee said Monday’s game would be important for the Panthers to bounce back from a tough loss.

The Panthers slipped by with a one-point win and Sallee could not have been more proud.

“We had to be tough, and you know how much I love toughness,” Sallee said. “They stuck with me and we won the game how I love to win games: with toughness.”

Alex McNamee can be reached at 581-7942 or dmcnamee@eiu.edu.