While football received most of the attention on Saturday, the Eagles’ men’s basketball team escaped Tampa Bay with a 53-41 victory over the South Florida Bulls.

In his return to the court after missing the season opener, Elijah McCadden led the way for the Eagles with 13 points, five rebounds and three assists. Cam Bryant and Andrei Sarasov also notched double digits in the low-scoring affair.

While the offense struggled to score, the GS defense held the Bulls to just over 26% shooting from the field and worse than 23% from outside the arc. The Eagles also stole the ball away six times and forced a total of 14 turnovers.

“We knew South Florida was going to be an extremely physical, big, athletic team, and guys really bought into the game plan,” said head coach Brian Burg. “We wanted to limit their transition opportunities, and we wanted to limit our turnovers to 10 or less and not have live ball turnovers. I know the turnovers were 18, but there were only four live turnovers in the second half, which allowed us to set our half court defense.”

The Eagles will have another short break before they host Bob Jones on Tuesday for the annual Toilet Paper Toss game. Tip-off is set for 6 p.m. and the game will be televised on ESPN+.