The Georgia Southern men and women dropped a pair of games Thursday evening. The men fell on the road in a tightly contested 70-67 loss at Texas State. The women continue to struggle at home in conference play as they lost to Louisiana 68-58. 

The Eagle women have now lost three straight conference games at home, but are 4-0 in the Sun Belt on the road. Georgia Southern came into the game Thursday night ranked fourth in the NCAA in scoring at 85 points per game, but could muster only 58 against the league’s top defensive squad. 

Things started out pretty even as the Eagles led by one, 14-13, at the end of the first quarter. The Ragin' Cajuns started the second quarter on a 10-0 run and outscored the Eagles by a 28-11 margin for a 16-point lead at the break, 41-25. The Eagles made a run but Louisiana held Georgia Southern without a field goal for a five and a half minute fourth-quarter stretch. 

“When we're not hitting our shots, we tend to get a little slack on defense,” said Eagle coach Anita Howard. “We allowed them to get comfortable. They scored well over their average in points and in threes. Teams are now sagging off of us. We just have to shoot better, especially in our own gym. Hats off to Louisiana, they played a sound defensive game." 

The Eagles were led by Terren Ward who sat out much of the first half with foul trouble. Ward had 15 points and 10 rebounds. Simone James was the only other Eagle in double figures as she had 11 points. 

The Ragin' Cajuns improves to 12-9 overall and 6-3 in the Sun Belt with the victory, while Georgia Southern falls to 13-5 overall and 5-4 in the league. The Eagles also fell to 1-4 at home in Sun Belt play. Up next the Eagles host Troy Saturday at 5:00. 

The Georgia Southern men jumped out to a 10-0 lead on the road at Texas State and would hold a 36-31 halftime lead. The Bobcats stormed back in the second half and led 66-59 with 1:43 left in the game. The Eagles got a three-point shot from Tyren Moore and a three-point play by Carlos Curry to cut the lead to two with just over 22 seconds remaining. 

The Eagles had the ball with 9.4 seconds left and trailing by three points after a Davion Coleman free throw. Jalen Finch took the inbounds pass and brought the ball up court where he fed it to Kamari Brown who threw a cross-court pass to Moore for a long three-point try, but the ball rimmed out and the final horn sounded. 

”We got beat on a lot of 50/50 balls and really got outrebounded,” said Eagle coach Brian Burg. “They outrebounded us by nine, and you just can’t let that happen, especially on the road. We had a tough time stopping Nighael Ceaser who scored 23 points. This game came down to getting to the 50/50 balls and making critical stops and we just didn’t do that tonight.” 

The Eagles were led by Tyren Moore with a career high 19 points. Andrei Savrasov had 17 points and Jalen Finch had 11. Georgia Southern falls to 12-10 overall and 5-4 in Sun Belt play. The Eagles continue their four-game road trip at Louisiana Saturday. Tipoff is set for 8 p.m. ET