The Belmont Bruins remain at the top of the Ohio Valley Conference with a perfect 8-0 conference record.

The Bruins are on a nine-game winning streak, but Belmont barely squeezed by Austin Peay in the Bruins’ most recent OVC win. The 78-75 victory saw a dynamite performance by the Bruins’ explosive guard Darby Maggard.

Maggard led the team’s offensive efforts with 24 points, 18 of which came from beyond the arc. Maggard’s fiery performance mirrored her efforts throughout the season thus far. In fact, Maggard doubled her points from the Bruins’ 86-58 win over Eastern.

Belmont has yet to face the likes of Tennessee State and Eastern Kentucky, but these two teams shouldn’t present much of a challenge for the Bruins. Tennessee State is ranked 11th in the conference, just above last-place Eastern Illinois. Eastern Kentucky is currently in seventh place.

Southern Illinois-Edwardsville has yet to be bumped from its second place seat as the Cougars are 7-1 in the conference and 10-9 on the season. Once again, a top conference team narrowly won over a conference rival in Southern Illinois Edwardville’s most recent win.

The Cougars snatched a 73-70 win over Tennessee-Martin last weekend. It was a last-minute three-point shot that gave Southern Illinois Edwardsville its seventh conference win Saturday.

Guard Lauren White dropped a three-pointer from beyond the arc at the buzzer to lift the Cougars over the Skyhawks. White was also the team’s leading scorer with 20 points.

Skilled guards seem to be a reoccurring theme for the OVC’s top teams. Eastern has garnered the skills of underclassmen guards like Danielle Berry, Taylor Steele and Karle Pace.

In October, the Bruins were picked by the league’s coaches and sports information directors to win the conference championship. They earned 242 votes, including 22 first-place votes.

Maggard and center Sally McCabe were chosen as the pre-season co-players of the year, and the two are living up to that honor. McCabe is shooting .534 percent so far this season and has pulled down the team’s second-highest amount of rebounds with 132.

While the Bruins continue to claw their way to the top of the conference, Eastern is struggling to push itself out of the bottom of the standings. The two teams will once again face off Thursday at Belmont.

In the rest of the OVC standings, Jacksonville State is in third, followed by Morehead State in fourth, Austin Peay in fifth and Southeast Missouri in sixth. Eastern Kentucky sits at seventh place, Murray State in eighth and Tennessee Tech is in ninth place.

Kaitlin Cordes can be reached at 581-2812 or krcordes@eiu.edu