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CHARLESTON, Ill. -- Junior Coartney McKinney's penalty kick with no time remaining gave Eastern Illinois women's rugby a thrilling 29-27 victory over visiting UW-Milwaukee on Saturday afternoon at Lakeside Field.

"We must have gotten up on the right side of the bed today,” said EIU head coach Frank Graziano. “We really shouldn't have won the game today. But we found ourselves in the right place at the right time and took advantage of UWM's mistakes. They are a fine squad, but sometimes a team ends up winning a game that they weren't supposed to win, and this was one of them.”

Down 27-26 with just over 30 seconds remaining in the contest, the UWM Panthers got called for a penalty, allowing McKinney the opportunity to go for a penalty kick 25 yards out, but way to the right side of the field.  She ended up missing just short, but the ball would drop directly in front of the goal line.

“We actually work on this type of scenario in practice,” said Graziano. “Kicking a PK short and then scooping up the live ball for a score.”

Which is exactly what happened this time around, except UWM would come up with the live ball following the PK miss, instead of Eastern.

But fortunately for EIU, UWM was immediately whistled for hanging onto the ball, in hopes of running out the clock.  That would give the Eastern Panthers one last chance for the win.

With time running out, and with the ball was placed directly in front of the goalposts, McKinney's second chance at a PK went right through the uprights as the final buzzer went off, giving Eastern the hard-fought 29-27 victory.

In the first half, the EIU Panthers jumped on the scoreboard first as freshman Lauren Doyle intercepted a UWM pass at the goal line and ran the ball nearly 100 yards for the score.  She earned the five-point try despite being tackled at the UWM goal line, thanks to a illegal desperation tackle by UW-Milwaukee.  McKinney would then nail her first of three two-point conversions to give the EIU Panthers the early 7-0 lead.

But the UWM Panthers would counter with a try of their own, but miss the conversion to trail 7-5.  EIU would then earn two consecutive trys as senior Crystal Jones and Doyle would run the ball in to give Eastern the lead.

At one point in the first half, UWM would get a chance at their own penalty kick, but would miss it.  However, they would take advantage of their field advantage in the closing seconds of the first half, as the UWM Panthers earned a hard-fought five-point try earlier one minutes past the time the clock went to zero.  They would miss their two-point conversion yet again, however, giving EIU the 19-10 halftime lead.

Just one minute into the second half, the Panthers scored first as Stephanie Militello's run and McKinney's kick would give EIU seven more points to move ahead 26-10.

But from that point on, the momentum would go to the Panthers of UW-Milwaukee as they recorded three consecutive trys, yet only converted one two-point conversion during that stretch.  UWM would slowly move to within 26-17 and 26-22 of the EIU Panthers, and eventually take the lead at 27-26 with just seven minutes remaining in the game.

But with the clock running down, the Panthers would eventually pull out the comeback win off the foot of McKinney.

The Panthers return to action next Saturday (Oct.. 3), traveling to the twin cities to face the Golden Gophers of Minnesota, with kickoff set for 11 am.  Eastern owns a 1-0 series lead over the Big Ten squad, after an relatively easy 77-0 win back in 2006.

... for more info, contact Bart Rettberg, Asst. SID