The Eagles defeated the Coastal Georgia Mariners last night 76-51 at in their exhibition game. Patrice Butler led the Eagles with 20 points and seven rebounds to pace the team to a win that will hopefully carry over into the regular season. “Being a role player and doing what coach tells me to do,” Butler said. “I got into a little foul trouble but my teammates just kept me positive and told me to keep going. Team chemistry is a real big thing and they really helped me out today.”

The Eagles started off the game a little slow and couldn’t convert a lot of their looks into points, but near the closing minutes of the first half they got hot and never looked back. They outscored the Mariners 42-23 in the second half. “We kept our composure, we didn’t panic, we stayed with our stuff, we got the looks and we started making baskets,” head coach Kip Drown said.

With all the talk on how they did defensively, the Eagles did a great job in the second half especially playing solid defense throughout holding the Mariners to a 36% field goal percentage in the game with a 31% percentage in the second half. “Overall I was pleased with our defense and the intensity they played with because they had a couple of kids who could really score,”Drown said.

The Eagles also had a new set of rules they play by this season than last season. The women’s game now consists of four 10 minute quarters instead of two 20 minute halves. There is also only one media timeout per quarter and fouls reset after each quarter. After the fourth team foul, the other team automatically shotos two free throws instead of one and one. Also, if a player fouls out the time allotted for changes is now 15 seconds and if not done in that time frame the coach will be given a bench technical foul. Lastly bands and amplified music can be played in all dead ball situations for better fan experience. 

The Eagles are confident they can keep this momentum alive as they head into their next matchup this Sunday against Lipscomb, which will kick off regular season action. The game will be in Hanner Fieldhouse and will tipoff at 2pm.