Eastern women’s basketball player Katlyn Payne’s shooting performance Monday should not be overlooked.

She shot 9-of-18 from the floor and 7-of-16 from 3-point range, which was good enough for 26 points—her new career high, which she said lifted a lot of weight off her shoulders.

She also tied a school record for most 3-pointers made in a game.

In four of her previous five games, Payne shot less than 28 percent from the floor, which included a 1-of-10 against Tennessee State on January 13th and a 2-of-13 performance against Southeast Missouri Saturday.

Eastern coach Debbie Black said teams were not doing anything different to guard Payne at the time.

“She has made those shots a thousand times,” Black said. “She has gotten pretty good looks. The ball didn’t go in. I think Katlyn has to focus on her defensive end of the game and let her offense come to her. The only thing we know is defense and rebounding you can control. Whether the ball goes in, you never can control that.”

Payne said the shooting slump was beyond frustrating.

“I am the shooter on the team,” Payne said. “I felt like I was letting my team down because I could not score.”

In the game against Murray State on January 20th, Payne started the game 0-of-4, but finished the game 4-of-4 and gave all her credit to freshman Erica Brown, who calmed her down and told her to be confident.

Brown said it was great to see Payne provide a good push for the Panthers in the loss on Monday.

“She’s been struggling lately with her shot and to see her come through that and hit a few was great,” Brown said. “It was just nice to see her back. Those shots helped us in the game a lot. Even though we didn’t win, it gave us a good push.”

The Panthers had their best shooting performance of the season, shooting 60 percent from the floor in the game and 70 percent (17-of-24) in the second half against Tennessee-Martin Monday.

“We realized that we could have any shot we wanted if we were patient and that worked out for us taking a lot of good shots at a high percentage,” Payne said.

The Panthers have lost five of their last six games.

Brown said the team is going to have a little work to do, but she does not know why the team has been struggling to come out with wins.

“Maybe it’s because our shots haven’t been falling like they used too,” she said. “Hopefully we can come together and get through it as a team because I know how good we can be if we can do that.”

Bob Reynolds can be reached at 581-2812 or rjreynolds@eiu.edu.