A poor second half of play by Georgia Southern University Lady Eagles was a big reason for Saturday’s loss to the University of Elon Phoenix. Continuing its losing streak, the GSU has now extended the skid to seven games in a row. The teams last win was against Western

Carolina University on January 21st. That game was GSU’s 199th win in Southern Conference play. The Eagles have been waiting for number 200 for almost a month now.

A louder and bigger than normal home crowd was on hand in Hanner Fieldhouse, but they had to suffer watching their Eagles lose yet another one, this one with a final score of 83-53.

The Eagles and the Phoenix played a very fast and exciting opening five minutes of basketball. The first three buckets shot by GSU were made, two of which being three-pointers from sophomore guard Mimi DuBose.

At the first time-out, the Phoenix was leading by a score of 15-10. Dubose finished the game with 11 points; nine of those were from downtown.

The game continued to be played in an upbeat manner with very few timeouts. At the end of the half Elon led the Eagles 38-28. Up to this point the Eagles shot 34.6 percent from the field and 23.5 percent from beyond the arc. DuBose led with nine points going into intermission followed by senior guard Samantha Williams with five.

As the second half began, the effort seemed to be dwindling for GSU. Very sloppy basketball took over with turnovers, fouls and bad passes becoming an every possession occurrence.

The Eagles are normally a second half team, so to see this type of poor play was something unexpected. The Phoenix outscored the Eagles 17-2 in the opening six minutes of play of the second half.

As time went on, so did the below average play of Head Coach Rusty Cram’s team in the second half.  “We didn’t. We didn’t play, I’m embarrassed. There’s not a lot of words you can say about a game like that…we didn’t show up to play today,” Cram had to say when asked what he thought of his teams play in the second half.

The Eagles went on to be outscored 50-25 in the second half. With only one home game left, and then two away games before the SoCon tournament, GSU will need to fix something.
“If they don’t have any more fight and heart than that, my concern is the competitive nature of this ballclub right now, and that’s concerning me big time,” Cram also said.

The Eagles will play the University of North Carolina-Greensboro on Monday at 7 p.m. This is Senior Night for Georgia Southern’s two seniors: Janay Wilson and Samantha Williams. This game will have an impact on GSU’s seeding in the SoCon tournament seeing as it is the 10th seed currently and UNCG is the 11th (2nd to last, and last, respectively).

Winning this last home game will give the team an advantage in who it plays in the first round game of the tournament.