By Ethan Smith, Sports Editor
sports.inkwell1@gmail.com
January 27, 2018
In last week’s games, the male and female divisions of Georgia Southern’s Eagles continued to progress with pace at which they did since the beginning of the year. The men were able to keep their 4th spot in the Sun Belt Conference while the women’s struggles continued with two losses to Texas State and UTA (University of Texas Arlington.).
With both games being at Hanner Fieldhouse, the Eagles had the home-court advantage against Texas State and UTA.
The men were defeated by Texas State 62-61 after Texas State used free throws with 3.7 seconds remaining to seal a one-point victory. Junior Guard Tookie Brown continued to play efficiently for the Eagles. In the game, he dropped 25 points in the loss, but missed a shot that resulted in the one-point loss when time expired. Brown did, however, recovered in the game against UTA in a 74-59. Helping the Eagles score a blowout victory and dropping 23 points. Despite permitting the Senior Kevin Hervey from the opposing team, UTA, scoring 29 points against them, the Eagles demonstrated stellar defensive effort. They only allowed the scoring of 30 points combined from a total of seven individual players. The men moved to 15-7 overall and 6-3 in the Sun Belt play and stayed 4th overall in the conference.
The women lost to Texas State 81-56 in their first game of the week, keeping a trend of losses in the Sun Belt going. Only two ladies from Eagles managed to score in the double-digits—a flop that can be attributed to the entire lady Eagle’s offense, which was stone-cold shooting 31.3% in the loss.
The women appeared to be a very different team in their match against UTA. They picked up their first Sun Belt Conference victory at 73-68. The women shot an impressive 51.9% from the field and accomplished a huge achievement thanks Sophomore Guard Amira Atwater. She had an amazing day passing the ball, dishing out 13 assists, which broke the previous record for assists in a single game of 12 by Gwenda Smith v Furman in 1993 and Vet Cooper in 1990. Sophomore Forward Nakol Franks led the Lady Eagles with 16 points, eight of which came from her season high eight free throws.
Overall, this week was a solid week of basketball for both the Eagle’s male and female divisions. In the future, because both games were held at home, the Eagles will not be back home until Feb 8th against UL Monroe and Feb 10th against Louisiana. Meanwhile, their upcoming games will be at Arkansas-Little Rock on Feb 1st and Arkansas State on Feb 3rd. Be sure to support the Eagles as much as possible and cheer them on whenever you can make the trip to Statesboro. Go Eagles! #GATA
