February 03, 2010 Alex Brown Tailgate Tattler

abrown6182@yahoo.com

    You can’t always wait for the run to happen.
    After two straight games of falling into a 21-point hole and battling back to make it interesting late, the Georgia Southern Eagles just ran out of gas Saturday afternoon against the College of Charleston.
    A week prior, Davidson led the Eagles by 21 with seven minutes left only to see Southern catch fire and cut it to three with under a minute to go.
    On Thursday, The Citadel used a miserable Eagle first half—which included CY benching all five starters--to take a 12-point lead into halftime and then pushed the margin to 21 just a few minutes into the second.
    But Southern chipped away at the lead from that point and then went on a 16-4 run in the final 7:33 to win 61-58 and complete the largest comeback in Georgia Southern basketball history.
    Stat of the game: The Eagles were 27 of 28 from the free throw line--96.4 percent.
    The Eagles rode that wave of momentum through the first half of Saturday’s game against Charleston to a 43-40 lead at the break. Unfortunately for the Eagles, they had to play the second half.
    Charleston’s Andrew Goudelock went off scoring 20 of his 23 points in the second half and the Cougars outscored the Eagles 50-29 after intermission. After Georgia Southern played so well in the first half, they could do nothing in the second. Rory Spencer had his best offensive game of the season scoring a career high 26 points—17 of those in the first half.
    Georgia Southern will travel to Western Carolina Thursday night and then to Davidson on Saturday. The Eagles are looking for their first road win in over a year.
    Meanwhile, the Lady Eagles are on a roll after winning three straight road games. There’s good news and some not great news involved here.
    Good news: Southern has won three straight and have put a 4 game cushion between themselves and the team immediately behind them.
    Not great news: All three wins came over teams below them in the standings. And the ladies are still sixth—one spot away from a first round bye if the tournament started today.
    Want more good news? Okay: There’s about a month of season left and the Lady Eagles may just be getting hot at the right time.
    Saturday saw Georgia Southern visit Western Carolina in a game that was moved up an hour in an attempt to avoid winter weather. After slow offensive starts for both sides, the Lady Eagles pulled away to a 32-21 halftime lead.
    The margin got no larger than 13 and no fewer than seven during the second half and the Lady Eagles hit 10 of 12 free throws down the stretch to secure a 71-58 win.
    Georgia Southern returns home for a rare back to back meeting with Western on Wednesday. This game is the result of a postponed game in December when WCU couldn’t leave Cullowhee due to—you guessed it—a winter storm. Imagine that. Due to print deadlines, we’ll cover this one next week.

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