The Eastern football team is off to an undefeated start in the Ohio Valley Conference, following its 34-16 win against Tennessee State that improved the Panthers to 4-0 in the league and 7-1 overall.

Led by the No. 1 offense in the FCS, the Panthers have outscored their opponents by an average of almost 27 points (331-143) in each win.

But the defense has cannot be overlooked, especially in the OVC, Tennessee State coach Rod Reed said prior to and after the Tigers’ loss to the No. 2-ranked team in the nation.

“I said it before, defensively (the Panthers) are on of the top defenses in the league,” Reed said. “Those guys play really hard on defense, and they did a good job of shutting us down when we weren’t shooting ourselves in the foot.”

Eastern has allowed 63 points in its four conference games, but 14 of them came on special teams’ miscues, both against Southeast Missouri.

With those two touchdowns taken away and considering that Panthers’ coach Dino Babers took out his starting defense in the fourth quarter against Eastern Kentucky, when the Colonels scored their lone touchdown, the starting defense for Eastern has allowed 42 points in four OVC wins.

That is an average of 10.5 points per game allowed and 15.8 when adding the rest of the scoring. Last year through the Panthers’ first four conference games, the defense had allowed 143 points, 80 more than this season.

As a whole, Eastern’s defense allows 302.8 yards per game in the OVC this season, which is second to Eastern Kentucky that allows 286.8 yards per game.

Despite not having an interception against Tennessee State on Saturday, the Panthers were still able to get their hands on the football, deflecting 10 passes from Tiger quarterback Ronald Butler. Red-shirt senior Nick Beard led the Panthers with four passes batted down, followed by junior Jourdan Wickliffe with two and red-shirt senior Alex McNulty with one.

Eastern’s defensive line had three pass attempts swatted away, led by sixth-year senior Pat Wertz who had two.

Senior Jon Voytilla returned to the starting defensive line unit this year after spending last season primarily as a reserve and special teams player. He recorded his first sack of the season against Tennessee State and said the team has responded well after having three new starters to the defensive line this year.

‘We have stepped in and really made an impact,” Voytilla said. “That was my expectation from day one, though. Regardless of what was being said, I knew that we were going to come in and make an impact.”

Voytilla and the rest of the defensive line have combined for 11.5 of Eastern’s 17 sacks this season, which is led by Wertz who has 5.5. Wertz had four sacks combined in 2011-12.

Aldo Soto can be reached at 581-2812 or asoto2@eiu.edu.