Eastern women’s basketball landed former Southeast Missouri State guard Kiyley Flowers this last offseason. If the team’s 84-37 loss against Illinois is any mark to go off of, they seem to be reaping return on investment.
Flowers has led the Ohio Valley Conference in steals per game since the 2022-2023 season. That year, she averaged 3.1 steals per game. Last year, she averaged 2.6.
The same theme showed against Illinois. Flowers had seven steals by the end of the game, and she also had two blocks. Flowers led the team in both metrics.
“I take pride when playing on the defensive end,” Flowers said. “I feel like not a lot of people do and I feel like that’s another part of the game where you can kinda get some stuff going. Just playing with this team, I know they’re going to have all the confidence in me to go get those steals.”
But, as the final score suggests, Flower’s defensive performance didn’t quite translate to the points for the Panthers.
Fifth year forward Jayda Johnson led the team in scoring. She had eight points.
The team shot 24.2% from the field and 8% from the three-point line.
Perhaps even more indicative of the Illini’s stout defense, senior forward Macy McGlone, (the returning OVC player of the year), was held to just two points. McGlone played a skosh over 18 minutes.
“That’s on me as a coach,” Eastern’s first year head coach Marqus McGlothan said. “I have to figure that piece out, make sure we have other options and give [McGlone] easier opportunities to score.”
Eastern was forced to shoot threes against the Illini, which aided in the Panthers struggling offense. Eastern shot 25 three-pointers and made two.
“We went away from what we normally do,” McGlothan said. “We shot about 25 threes in the last two games. We shot 14 [against North Dakota], then we shot 10 [against North Dakota State]. Illinois did a great job of keeping us out of the paint and making it difficult to get paint touches.”
The lopsided score allowed for some of Eastern’s bench players to get some game experience. Johnston, the leading scorer, came off the bench. Redshirt freshman forward Georgia Cox and senior center Ellie Colson got time as well.
“I thought Georgia [Cox] was aggressive,” McGlothan said. “Our bench came and was aggressive on the court. That’ll help us in conference. Having some depth, some people that we can trust playing pretty solid against a Big10 team.”
Illinois will be giving Eastern’s athletic department a sum of money for playing this game. Administration calls these games, “guarantee games.”
“For us, it help’s us prepare against conference [teams], playing against bigger, more physical teams,” McGlothan said of playing in these guarantee games. “It’ll help us get used to physicality. Obviously, noone in our conference will be as big or as physical as these teams.”
The loss against Illinois drops the Panthers to 0-3 on the season. Illinois remains undefeated at 3-0.
Eastern’s next game will also be against a Big10 opponent. They travel up to Minneapolis on Wednesday, November 20 to play Minnesota.
Aidan Cusack can be reached at 581-2812 or at atcusack@eiu.edu.
