In a long fight, the Georgia Southern Women’s basketball team lost to the University of Louisiana at Monroe Warhawks 80-62 in Hanner Fieldhouse Saturday.

The GS Eagles came out looking to get a conference win which would have put them above ULM in the Sun Belt, but that did not end up happening when the buzzer sounded for the last time and the Warhawks took the victory.

“It hurts because that was a tie-breaker,” junior guard Alexis Brown said pertaining to the loss. “We had to win that game to be ahead of them in the conference.”

For most of the game the score went back and forth and the Eagles has a chance at beating one of their conference rivals, but the communication on the court ended up being what helped the Warhawks come out on top.

“You know it’s funny because, players, you get them off the floor and they can’t stop talking, but you get them on the floor and you can’t get them to talk to each other,” Head Coach Kip Drown said. “Communication is so important, particularly defensively…so I’m not sure it’s possible to coach it up anymore than our assistants do and we do as a staff and there comes a point in time

when you have to take ownership of a situation.”

The Eagles seemed to lose sight of how important communication was in order to overcome their opponent, and they seemed to lose that focus and ability to power through the adversity.

“I feel like that’s a mindset,” junior forward Hailey Dias-Allen said. “We were tired in a fatigued setting, but that’s a mindset and you got to push through, and I feel like we didn’t push through.”

While most of the third quarter was spent tied at 47-47, the Warhawks came back and made the score 56-50 by the end of that time and from then on they took control of the court to get the victory over the Eagles.

“We had our moments where we didn’t share the ball when we knew we should’ve had the extra pass” Brown said. “We should’ve helped our teammates rebound so I guess we didn’t play as a team throughout the whole game.”

The Eagles have time to improve communication before they take on the University of South Alabama in Mobile on Thursday to hopefully get another conference win in the books.

Bethany-Grace Bowers, The George-Anne Assistant Sports Editor, gasports@georgiasouthern.edu