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Wednesday, December 6, 2006 9:54 PM CST
Underdog Panthers are the team with momentum vs. Tech
BY BRIAN NIELSEN Sports Editor
bnielsen@jg-tc.com
Yes, Tennessee Tech has beaten last season’s NCAA Sweet 16, Kansas-conquering Bradley.
Yeah, the Golden Eagles beat the now 6-3 Bradley team that won by 20 over a DePaul team that won by 30 over Eastern Illinois this season.
But when it comes to the earlier-than-ever-starting Ohio Valley Conference basketball race, Eastern and Tech are dead even at 0-1.
And when it comes to momentum, an EIU team predicted to finish ninth in the 11-team OVC might be running ahead of the No. 3 pick Eagles heading into today’s 7:30 p.m. game at Tennessee Tech.
While the Panthers after a 53-50 near-upset loss to defending champion Murray State used Mike Robinson’s last-second 40-footer to beat Arkansas State 73-70 on Saturday, Tech was brought back down to earth from its conquest of Bradley when it lost its OVC opener at Austin Peay 77-70.
“We didn’t play well,” Tech coach Mike Sutton said. “If we play a lick, we beat them. But that’s the way it goes.
“We played four games in eight days. If we play as well the fourth game as we did the first three, we win it.”
Tonight we see whether Tech, 3-3 for the season, has recharged with four days without a game or is on a downward spiral.
“This is the biggest game of the year until the next game,” Sutton said. “If you don’t regroup and play better then you don’t deserve to win. I don’t think there will be any easy games.”
Coach Mike Miller sees the dangerous aspect of taking his 3-5 Panthers into the game against the Eagles.
“They Bradley game that we saw (on tape), they just kept making plays,” Miller said. “They have the ability to make up a lot of ground. They’re an explosive team due to their athleticism and style of play.”
Maybe most explosive for Tech is 6-foot-2 junior guard Anthony Fisher, the OVC Player of the Week after scoring a career-high 35 points in the loss to Tech to bring his season average to 20.8 points per game.
“He’s shooting a high percentage,” Miller said of Fisher, who has hit 19 of 35 3-pointers for .543 percentage and is shooting .486 from the field overall. “And he is getting to the free-throw line.”
Who guards Fisher?
“That’s a good question,” Miller said. “We’re going to have to find out. They present a number of problems.”
Having taken Tech into overtime last season in a game that dropped the Panthers to 0-5 in a 6-21 season, Eastern should have confidence in that it is considerably ahead of last year’s pace.
Meanwhile, Sutton has seen progress in battling the Guillain-Barre’ Syndrome that struck him in April of 2005 after winning an OVC regular season championship, paralyzing him for much of that summer and leaving associate head coach Steve Payne to run Tech during last season’s 19-12 campaign.
“I’m still using a wheelchair but I won’t in a game,” Sutton said. “I’ll be on the sideline with a walker. I still have a ways to go but that’s the part of the process with the damage done to the nervous system. It’s a slow and tedious process.”
Contact Brian Nielsen at bnielsen@jg-tc.com or 238-6856.
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Angie Miley wrote on Jul 17, 2006 8:05 PM: