The Eastern women’s basketball team was not everything the team hoped it would be in its first exhibition of the season, as defensive and rebounding concerns lingered throughout the game, but nonetheless, strong offensive performances from Eastern’s starters carried the Panthers to an 86-82 win over Illinois-Wesleyan. 

In her first live game action since last December, Eastern redshirt-senior guard Grace Lennox returned to the court and reminded everyone without skipping a beat why she was one of the best players in the Ohio Valley Conference. 

Lennox finished the game with 22 points, six rebounds and 11 assists, doing it all without ever committing a turnover. 

“It was awesome (being back on the court), I was ready to go, and I am super excited for the next game,” Lennox said. 

The defense was not great for Eastern in the game, often time the Panthers were getting beat inside and giving up easy layups, letting Wesleyan stay in a game that Eastern almost seemed to pull away in multiple times. 

But, this is a spot once again where Lennox provided a spark that the team missed from her last season. Lennox came up with six steals on defense and offensively led the team on runs to keep Eastern ahead of Wesleyan. 

“I thought (Lennox) was great especially in the fourth quarter and just made the right plays and they were trying to press, and she got us through the press and 11 assists and no turnovers is pretty good,” head coach Matt Bollant said. “She didn’t seem to show a lot of rust and was taking care of the ball for sure.”

Four of Eastern’s five starters, including Lennox, finished in double-figure scoring in the game. Sophomore forward Grace McRae had 18 points and six rebounds, sophomore guards Karle Pace and Taylor Steele had 17 and 14 points respectively.

The offense in general, especially the play of the starter was a good sign moving forward for Eastern, particularly chemistry wise. Lennox did not get to spend a lot of time last season playing with Steele, Pace and McRae, so to see the unit score efficiently is a step in the right direction. 

“Karle and Taylor especially have come a long way since this time last year,” Lennox said. “I didn’t really get a chance to play much with Karle this time last year and we worked really well together so I am really excited to get to push the ball with her and then definitely we have to get better on defense and we have got to be really good in the buzz hopefully, got to get some stops in that.”

Bollant echoed the production of the starting five, also saying that they needed to be better on defense, but where his concern fell after the game was with the thin play of the bench.

The first two players off the bench for Eastern were freshman Kira Arthofer and Damonique Miller, both of whom left something to be desired in their first appearances as Panthers. 

Arthofer had just one shot and one assist in 11 minutes and Miller was 1 of 4 from the field in nine minutes.

Eastern’s bench as a whole scored just seven points in the game, in a showing that did not speak to the depth Eastern hopes to have there this season. 

“Right now the challenge is where do we go, you know 6-14 (in the rotation) are really even and they really haven’t separated themselves,” Bollant said. “I think Kira did in practice but it wasn’t great tonight and I think we will have some others but that’s the challenge right now and I’m not sure 6-14 who should be playing and how much, we’ve got to figure that out.”

Eastern collapsed on both sides of the ball in the third quarter, shooting just 4-of-18 from the field, while allowing Wesleyan to go 6-of-15 and outscore Eastern 15-12.

Eastern bounced back in the fourth quarter, shooting 66.7 percent from the field, but the third quarter was still a topic that hung in the air after the game. 

“The third quarter basically it’s just our defense, we just weren’t playing our defense today,” Lennox said. “We just talked about our lack of communication, we’ve been working on it, but we have got to just continue to work on that a bit more.”

Eastern opens up its regular season Tuesday in Lantz Arena against Oakland City.

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