What I’ve learned from covering the Eastern women’s basketball team the last four years is you can’t predict what will happen when a team gets to the conference tournament.

For the last three years, I’ve thought the Panthers were going to win the tournament championship.

The Maggie Kloak-led bunch from three years ago had all the right pieces, from senior leaders to freshman upstarts.

The emergence of Ta’Kenya Nixon as one of the best players in the conference the next year had title written all over it.

The Panthers whole roster returned last season, which seemed like a glaring advantage over other Ohio Valley Conference teams. 

All three years: no tournament trophy. 

What about this year? Yes, the Panthers have the right ingredients to win the championship, but so do other teams. 

The way the tournament bracket is drawn, the Panthers could play three different teams on Friday — all three they’ve lost to this season.

The Panthers have won one game and lost one against Murray State and Tennessee-Martin and lost the only game they played against Eastern Kentucky; however, they played Eastern Kentucky on Jan. 7 — 14 games ago.

Any team could win it all, Eastern head coach Lee Buchanan said — any team from Eastern (the No. 1 seed) to Murray State (the No. 8 seed). 

You can predict which teams will be the top seeds as the season progresses — Eastern clearly had one of the best bodies of work all year — but you can’t predict how a bunch of 18- to 22-year-olds are going to react to the pressure, atmosphere, travel, hotel rooms or game times.

On Friday, the Panthers will tip off at noon. They never play at noon. Moreover, they’ll have to get up at 6 a.m. or so, eat a little something for breakfast, get their gear, ride the bus for 15 minutes to the arena and practice at 7:30 a.m.

Buchanan said the worst time for him, mentally, is the few hours before the game because all he can think about are the “what ifs.”

As we found out last March, you can’t predict the weather either. A tornado stopped the game, all of a sudden. That’s as unpredictable as it gets.

Buchanan, who was voted the OVC Coach of the Year on Tuesday, can’t predict the future. I can’t either. I wont even try.

All I know is that the women’s team plays at noon on Friday and I’ll be there for it. The two teams will warm up before the game. After the starting lineups are announced and the ball is tipped, anything can happen.

What I can confidently say, though, is if the Panthers are raising the trophy Saturday afternoon it’ll be because they played relaxed, confidently and executed the things they had to do to win two games.

Everything else is just a guess.

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