It wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to say the MiMi DuBose and her extended family are the first family of Georgia Southern athletics.

DuBose, a junior shooting guard, is the top scorer for the Eagles, averaging 15.7 points per game.

Her sister Lee was a guard for GSU from 2002 until 2005.

It doesn’t stop there.

Lee DuBose became Lee Economos in 2010 when she married Mike Economos, a former outfielder for the Georgia Southern baseball team.

And, of course, MiMi DuBose has her own connection to the baseball team – long-time boyfriend Chris Beck, a former GSU pitcher who was selected by the Chicago White Sox in the second round of the 2012 MLB Draft.

"We’re all just like one big group of friends," Dubose said. "It’s neat to see how Georgia Southern connects people. Georgia Southern basketball has been a part of our family for a long time."

The list of family athletes keeps going.

Mike Economos’ brother Andrew played football at Georgia Tech and currently serves as the long snapper for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

DuBose’s father, Bolling DuBose, played basketball at Wake Forest and has coached prep boys basketball for 36 years.

DuBose and Beck haven’t followed the DuBose-Economos storyline exactly. Mike and Lee Economos met at GSU, but DuBose met Beck in 2006 as a freshman at Jefferson High School — where Bolling DuBose is the head boys basketball coach — and the pair has been together ever since.

When Beck was drafted, it was the first time they’d been apart. He played his first season in the Minor Leagues with the Great Falls Voyagers in Montana.

"It was tough at first, because we grew up in the same town and came to school (at GSU) together," DuBose said. "We saw each other every day for seven or eight years of our life. It was kind of culture shock when he left. But we’re both busy, he’s got baseball and I have basketball. It works out."

"It gets hectic at times being long distance," added Beck, who spoke at GSU on Thursday at the annual "Evening With the All-Stars" event and plans to be at Hanner Fieldhouse today when the Eagles face the Davidson Lady Wildcats at 5 p.m. "I think I was like 24 hours away when I was in Montana. But we’ve been in a relationship so long, we can handle it."

In fact in some ways, it may have improved the relationship.

"It’s actually a lot better than we thought it would be," DuBose laughed. "We don’t ever fight about anything."

A tough test

The Eagles (4-15, 3-7 Southern Conference) feel like they’ve come a long way under first-year coach Chris Vozab.

They’ll have a tough test against Davidson (12-8, 9-1), which is tied for first place in the SoCon and handed GSU a 61-49 loss when the teams met in Davidson, N.C., on Dec. 1.

Junior 6-foot-4 forward Sophia Aleksandravicius notched a double-double with 24 points and 10 rebounds against the Eagles.

"We know she’s skilled enough and athletic enough that she’s going to get her points," Vozab said about Aleksandravicius. "We have to make sure she has to work for all her points. I thought in the second half at their place we really struggled in executing what we were trying to do. We’ve got to make sure when we come up with a plan that we’re on top of it for 40 minutes."

"I think we’re a different team now than we were then," DuBose added, "especially with (point guard Alexis Sams) coming along as a freshman. She’s not playing like a freshman at point guard, she’s playing like an upper classman."

Sams played only three minutes the last time the Eagles faced Davidson. Over the last stretch, when GSU won two out of three, Sams averaged 34 minutes per game.