The Georgia Southern women’s basketball team will be looking to finish the season strong after being eliminated from tournament contention last week against Appalachian State.

Their final two games will be tonight and Saturday against UL Monroe and the No. 3 seed in the Sun Belt conference UL Lafayette.

The Eagles are currently on a six-game losing streak heading into tonight’s game against ULM. The last game between these two teams came down to the last 15 seconds of regulation when ULM’s Deja Chase hit a runner with 0.7 seconds left on the clock to win 50-49. GSU had led by one point down to the final seconds after Patrice Butler knocked down two free throws, but weren’t able to close out the game.

With both teams sitting at the bottom of the conference with practically nothing to play for but momentum going into next season, this should be as intense as the first matchup.

“We’re just talking to them about trying finish on a really positive note and finish feeling good about everything; we’re moving forward. We would love to get two this weekend, so that it kind of gives us some motivation to go into the spring with weight lifting, workouts and going into the summer,” GSU head coach Kip Drown said.

With GSU leading scorer Angel McGowan being injured last game versus App State, Drown will be looking for guard Alexis Sams to continue her aggressive offensive play in order to fill in the scoring gap. Despite the loss to App State, Sams dropped a career high 20 points on 50 percent shooting from the floor.

“When Angel went down, I knew I had to try step up to make up for her being out, but also it brings a different dynamic to the whole team. All the coaches have been really confident in me and that makes me feel confident in myself,” Sams said.

Going into Saturday’s game against ULL might be the challenge GSU needs to motivate them for next year’s tournament chase. Suffering a 17 point blowout at home to a future tournament contender, after only being down three points going into the fourth quarter can really sit on a team’s mindset. Sams performed relatively well in the last meeting, scoring 12 points off of 5-7 shooting.

“We’re still trying get these two wins, being out of the tournament, which kind of makes it a little bit harder to be motivated. At the same time we know that we have another whole year coming up, we got two more games to finish up strong this year. So we really been working hard to play these two games like it’s any other game in the season,” Sams said.

Both games will be on the road for the Georgia Southern women’s basketball team. GSU leading scorer Angel McGowan status is unknown for the next two games.

“She shot today, went through shooting drills, but has not gone through contact. To be honest she looks good moving. We haven’t heard anything official,” Drown said.

Tonight’s matchup against ULM will tip off at 6:15 p.m.