By: Mike Anthony

TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services

For most of the last four seasons, the book on Georgia Southern men’s basketball has been the same.

The Eagles are an athletic team with plenty of talent and – injury permitting – a lot of depth.

They’ve consistently out-performed preseason predictions and have been a mainstay near the top of the Sun Belt standings and have earned one of the top four seeds in the conference tournament in four of the last five seasons.

But for all that success, the Eagles have never quite been able to reach the top of the mountain.

Shooting woes and a difficulty in winning road games have popped up at the worst times and the Eagles have seemed to be on the wrong end of most ‘must-win’ games.

The result is still a solid Georgia Southern squad – but one that is now closing in on 30 years without an appearance in the NCAA tournament.

So, while this season’s team has all the looks of a possible contender, it will be battling nearly three decades of demons along with the rest of the Sun Belt.

To be fair, the deck is stacked against the Eagles, as well as most other programs not fortunate enough to play in one of the power conferences.

Despite the Sun Belt quickly improving its overall statistics as a league and pulling off a pair of first round NCAA victories in recent history, the postseason continues to take more and more power conference teams with at-large bids.

So, while the Sun Belt has a handful of viable league title contenders this season and the ability to make some noise on the national stage, it’s already written in stone that only the league’s tournament champion will get an invitation, regardless of the resumes of the others.

In a way, that makes things a bit easier for Georgia Southern. To paraphrase the all-time classic movie ‘Major League’, “There’s only one thing left to do… Win the whole thing.”

That’s much easier said than done, but it’s an attainable goal for this season’s Eagles and one they’d do well to set their minds on right now.

Of course, coach speak rules the day in any sport. No amount of success or struggle will get GS coach Mark Byington to talk about a conference title in December – or in January or February, for that matter.

But the truth of the matter is that if the Eagles want to make the big dance in March, they need to start putting themselves in position for it right now.

The team has taken the first steps with a pair of wins in its’ first two Sun Belt games. A good conference tournament seed will likely net a more favorable run of opponents during the must-win games.

As the season goes on, the team also needs to consider rest for players, as everyone will have to be prepared for what could be three or four straight days of single elimination play.