With the addition of Belmont to the Ohio Valley Conference, the basketball league is separated into divisions for the first time this season.

The Eastern women’s basketball team will be in the West Division, which includes Austin Peay, Murray State, Southern Illinois-Edwardsville, Southeast Missouri and Tennessee-Martin.

Eastern head coach Lee Buchanan said the West Division looks like the tougher of the two; after all, a team from what is now the West Division has won the OVC Tournament title 11 times since 2000, including the last seven.

The OVC’s East Division features Tennessee Tech, Eastern Kentucky, Morehead State, Tennessee State, Jacksonville State, and newly added Belmont.

Teams will play every team within its division twice and everyone outside of it once, as opposed to the old method of playing every team twice.

“There is some parity in this league,” Buchanan said. “Right now, some of the better teams are on our side. People will tell you that goes in cycles.”

Buchanan said being unable to play every team twice will disillusion the conference champion because it becomes more challenging to beat a team the third time once they get into the conference tournament.

“The coaches in this league are good at scouting and find your weaknesses pretty quickly,” Buchanan said.

However, playing every team twice would mean playing 24 conference games, where as the teams only play about 30 regular season games total. That’d be hard to do with non-conference matchups, Buchanan said.

Even so, Buchanan said the way the league is set up doesn’t allow teams to fall asleep without consequences.

“I look at our side and there’s not an easy one,” Buchanan said. “You better win your home games.”

When it comes down to tournament time, Buchanan said the team can’t be worried about anything but itself.

He said the health and confidence of the team is as important as anything to gain momentum going into the tournament, which the Panthers have entered as one of the top two seeds in three of the past four years, but haven’t won.

“We’ve knocked on the door,” Buchanan said. “The difficult part is there’s no secret formula. If we knew the formula, we’d put it in play.”

The winner of the tournament will probably be the team that shoots the ball with the best percentage, Buchanan said — something the Panthers haven’t done in recent years.

The Panthers earned a bye as the No. 2 seed last year, directly into the semifinal round, but shot 36.9 percent from the floor and lost the game.

In the West Division, Tennessee-Martin and Austin Peay have each won two tournament titles in the last four years.

Tennessee-Martin is returning its top scorers, including Heather Butler. Butler is the preseason player of the year in the conference, along side Jasmine Newsome. Newsome and Butler were voted into the OVC preseason All-American team.

Also on that list: Eastern seniors Ta’Kenya Nixon, Mariah King and Sydney Mitchell.

The Panthers open their season on the road at 6:05 p.m. Friday against Indiana State in Terre Haute, Ind.

Alex McNamee can be reached at 581-2812 or admcnamee@eiu.edu.