The Eastern men’s soccer team is 2-10-1 and needs to win its next two conference games against Fort Wayne and Oral Roberts to have any chance of making it to the Summit League conference tournament.

Eastern remains winless in conference at 0-3-1 and they are also 0-7 on the road, where they have not won since 2012. Eastern has also dropped two straight home games to Western Illinois last Saturday and to Green Bay on Tuesday.

Freshman goalkeeper Mike Novotny has been solid for Eastern despite having a 1-8 record. He has given up 17 goals while making 39 saves and has a 1.58 goals against average.

Eastern senior forward Tayron Martin scored his first goal of the year Tuesday against Green Bay in the Panthers’ loss. Martin led the team in points with nine last year and had one goal and an assist. He has two assist and four points this year.

Around The Summit League:

Western Illinois is unbeaten in its last seven games after tying Drake 1-1 on Tuesday. Western goalkeeper Yves Dietrich finally gave up a goal after having a six game shut out streak. He leads the Summit League in saves and save percentage. Dietrich has seven shutouts this year.

Western’s Charlie Bales is a league leader in points with 14 and shots with 41. He is also tied for first for most goals with six. Eric Kronenberg from Denver and Emmanuel Macias from IUPUI also have six goals.

Offensive players of the week in the Summit League were Tarik Salkicic from Oral Roberts and Mario Alvarez from Western Illinois.

Salkicic is a junior midfielder and this is his first career player of the week award. He earned the award by scoring the game-winning goal in the 73rd minute over IUPUI. This gave Oral Roberts its first conference win and snapped their four game losing streak.

Alvarez from Western Illinois is a midfielder and this is his third career offensive player of the week. He earned it by scoring the game-winning goal against Eastern Illinois last Saturday in a 1-0 victory. The senior had a career high five shots against Eastern and his goal helped Western improve its winning streak to six games.

Defensive player of the week was Yves Dietrich for the third straight week. The senior extended his scoreless streak to 540 minutes after a 1-0 victory over Eastern. Dietrich had to make only three saves in the contest. A player has not won the award three weeks in a row since 1995.

Western Illinois, Denver, Fort Wayne and Omaha are the four teams at the top of the Summit League conference right now. They would make it to the tournament if the season were to end today.

Mark Shanahan can be reached at 581-2812 or mmshanahan@eiu.edu