Georgia Southern Preview: The Next Step

Each day from October 23-November 3, there will be a basketball blogger/fan previewing their team in this space. 

The Georgia Southern Eagles are coming off the second largest turnaround in Southern Conference history and find themselves looking to build off the momentum gained from last season. After winning only one conference game in the 2010-2011 season the Eagles finished with a 12-6 conference record in 2011-2012, barely missing 2nd place in the South Division.

Georgia Southern found themselves above .500 in March for the first time since the 2007-2008 season when they beat UTC in the first round of the SoCon tournament to improve to 15-14. It was also the Eagles first SoCon tournament victory in seven years. For good reason there is plenty of optimism around Statesboro that the Eagles can take things to the next level in coach Charlton Young’s fourth year despite losing senior starters Willie Powers (10.8 ppg, 5.4 ast, 4.0 reb) and Ben Drayton (11.9 ppg, 3.0 ast, 1.6 stl) to graduation, as well as rising Sophomore center Tyrone Brown (2.4 ppg, 1.2 rpg) who was dismissed from the team over the summer.

Georgia Southern returns 7 players who were a part of the rotation last season and adds four newcomers this year. The core of the team will be the highly praised junior class that Coach Young brought in two years ago. The five players from that class have combined to play 278 games, with 145 starts, and over 6000 minutes in their first 2 years on campus. This is the year that Eagles fans hope the growing pains of the past two years start to pay off.

Read the entire preview here