Last season when Tennessee-Martin and guard Kendall Spray traveled to Lantz Arena, the dead-eye shooting Spray dropped a career-high 33 points on the Panthers, but Eastern still managed to win 80-70 in overtime.

This season however, Spray returns as an even bigger threat and while Eastern is confident it can repeat the result, this time they want to keep Spray at bay.

“It’s obviously huge (to stop Spray),” coach Matt Bollant said. “She is a really good three-point shooter, they’ve got good players around her that find her and she moves well without the ball, she shoots it quickly and just does a lot of good things for them.”

Spray’s threat as a perimeter shooter is something Bollant said many teams have tried to stop this season, but have not been able to do, meaning the task at hand for sophomore guard Danielle Berry, who will be responsible for covering Spray, will not be an easy one.

Spray is averaging a team-best 17.3 points per game (3rd in OVC) and has made conference-high 70 three-pointers this season.

The key to guarding Spray however might lie in how well a team guards the players around her Bollant said. Noting that if his defense ends up having to rotate and help a lot on other players, it could lead to Spray getting a lot of open looks.

The play of Eastern’s guards is something Bollant says will be “huge” in handling the Skyhawks 1-3-1 defensive scheme.

“Obviously, they’re the ones with the ball in their hands and making the decisions and they’re the ones that are going to have to guard their two scorers, they’re both guards in Spray and (Emanye) Robertson,” Bollant said. “A lot happens with their point guard Robertson so their ability to guard and their ability to take care of the ball is going to very (advantageous) tomorrow.”

Both the Skyhawks and Panthers lost in their last games, but the losses could not have been any different in appearance.

Tennessee-Martin lost an overtime match to Morehead State 81-76 on Jan 13, in which it had four players score in double-digits including 17 from Spray.

Eastern on the other hand is coming off an 86-58 loss to Belmont on Jan.13.

The loss to a team that Bollant described as “the class of the OVC” does not shake the team’s confidence as the team played well in the previous conference games it played in.

In the Panthers’ game against Belmont, Bollant was not so much upset with the outcome, as he was with his team’s defensive effort in the final minutes.

“Our thing that we say is how you do anything is how you do everything,” Bollant said. “So if you act like in the last two minutes you don’t care and it’s not a big deal because you’re down; well, to me we do and I want it to be different and I want it to be all the time.”

Tennessee-Martin however, is a team Bollant feels Eastern matches up much better with than Belmont.

“There (are) different teams in our league that I think we look like. We’re skilled and Tennessee-Martin is skilled, so I think that we probably match up with them,” Bollant said. “They’re not physically quite as gifted as some other teams, but they’re really smart and skilled, so lets see if we can step up and match them.”

Eastern and Tennessee-Martin play Thursday at 5:15 p.m. at Lantz Arena.

JJ Bullock can be reached at 581-2812 or jpbullock@eiu.edu