Georgia Southern’s men’s basketball team won 79-69 against Coastal Carolina despite a late spark by the Chanticleers.

The Eagles led by as much as 18 with 7:17 left in the 2nd half but then the Chanticleers had a late spark where they went on a 20-6 run which cut the Eagles’ lead down to four with 2:07 left in the half. 

But then the Eagles responded by outscoring the Chanticleers 10-4 to close out the game. 

“We had a bad three or four minutes there in the second half but we did a good job at recovering and finishing it out,” Head Coach Mark Byington said. “I challenged the guys a couple different times to play tougher and battle harder. We had a couple guys I thought had really good basketball games.”

Redshirt-junior guard Quan Jackson led the Eagles with 18 points and seven rebounds. Senior forward Isaiah Crawley also added 20 points while shooting 10-12 from the free throw line.

Gs hit 70% of their free throws tonight as they were at the line a lot, having shot 40 free throws for the entire game.

“We’ve been working on free throws a ton, and I know I get hit up on Twitter from random people at a time to work on free throws,” Byington said. “We work on them all the time and for us to make 70% tonight, we needed every one of them.”

The Eagles played great defense for most of the game despite the 2nd half struggles as they held Coastal Carolina to 0-14 on 3-pointers, while also causing 17 turnovers.

Gs will be back at Hanner at 4 p.m. on Saturday to play Appalachian State. Last time the two teams met Justin Forrest hit a game winning 3-pointer with 0.9 to give App State the 74-72 win at home.

Elijah Jackson, The George-Anne Sports Editor, gasports@georgiasouthern.edu