After splitting its matches last weekend on the road, the Eastern volleyball team will hit the road again this weekend to play Eastern Kentucky on Friday and Morehead State on Saturday.

The Panthers are fresh off a win against Tennesse-Martin after losing to Southeast Missouri and losing their five-game winning streak in the process.

Eastern Kentucky has a record of 7-5 and Morehead State is currently 6-6.

This weekend will be a new test for the Panthers, as they have not seen either team yet this year.

Coach Sam Wolinski said that she and assistant coach Peter Green both had to really look at what these teams do so they can be ready for them.

Late in the season, the Panthers have already played a few of the other teams one time before and had a chance to look back at the first match to ready themselves for the second.

Although the Panthers have not played either team, they will see some similarities between them and Morehead State as they both play a 6-2 styled offense.

The Panthers practice against a 6-2 offense in practice and Wolinski said that will help them this weekend even though Morehead runs it a little differently.

Morehead State has two outside hitters that will get the ball often that the Panthers will be looking for.

Wolinski said that they have been focusing on a way to win the matches quickly.

“Going into practice this week just taking care of our controllables and being more efficient at what we are doing and find a way to win early on,” Wolinski said.

Wolinski added that the strengths for the Panthers include putting focus on getting after their serving as well as on the defensive end and that the team’s blocking has picked up later in the season.

Many of Eastern’s players usually gets double digit kills which has helped them get a few wins as they usually out-kill their opponent.

“I think we are doing a good job, if you were to look at our stats sheet we are averaging anywhere from four to six people in double figures with kills,” Wolinski said.

One of their biggest challenges against Eastern Kentucky will be to take out the middle out of their offense according to Wolinski.

Rachel Vick has the second most kills on Eastern Kentucky’s roster with 219. She also has the highest kill percentage with .244.

The Panthers run an offense similar to Morehead State. but that is not the case with Eastern Kentucky.

Eastern Kentucky runs a slower offense than the Panthers.

“Our serving game is going to be huge, I think that if we serve aggressive that will keep them out of system,” Wolinski said.

Tiffany Wayne can be reached 581-2812 or tdwayne@eiu.edu