By: Mike Anthony

TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services

By any measure imaginable, the 2018 Georgia Southern football season has been an overwhelming success.

The Eagles entered the fall with their third head coach in four seasons and their fifth offensive coordinator in the same span. The team went a program-worst 2-10 in 2017, losing its first nine games as one of the youngest rosters in the country was thrown into the deep end and struggled to stay afloat.

Those two wins came only after Chad Lunsford was named interim head coach midway through the season. Lunsford was given the official head coach title just before the final game of the season. He promised a return to the winning culture that Georgia Southern is synonymous with and he has delivered.

Armed with some new faces on the coaching staff and a team that has had an extra bounce in its step since before spring practice began, the Eagles currently sit at 8-3 and have a chance to notch their third nine-win season in five years at the FBS level.

But for all the success, there is one glaring wrong from the past few years of GS football that need to be righted.

On Saturday, the Eagles head to Atlanta to take on Georgia State and will try to end a three-game losing streak that stems back to the 2015 regular season finale.

The Panthers haven’t been the cause of the Eagles’ recent struggles. After all, a program with a lifetime record of 29-76 isn’t the cause of anyone’s main problems. But Georgia State has been there to rub salt in the wounds over the last few seasons, making all of the negatives sting just a bit more.

Georgia Southern has exceeded even the most optimistic of expectations this season and will soon receive an invitation to is second bowl game in program history.

The Eagles were in contention for the Sun Belt championship game into November and a still relatively young squad figures to keep the positive momentum rolling into 2019.

But there’s still a looming, panther-shaped box remaining to be checked off on this season’s list of goals.

College teams are often remembered season by season, but individual classes of players also take plenty of pride in what their group was able to accomplish during their time.

This year’s seniors already have a roller coaster resume. They signed on and took a chance with a team in its FBS infancy and were immediately part of a bowl winner. Then they endured a coaching change and – over two seasons – saw the team sink as low as it ever has.

But in their final season at Georgia Southern, this class has flipped the script. In less than 12 months, they have guided the Eagles from the depths of national bottom 10 lists to plenty of accolades about a team from Statesboro that is on the rise.

The one thing this class has left to do is to take down that team from Atlanta.

And based on how this season is going, those seniors are probably thinking the same thing as their fans.

Is it Saturday yet?