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Lady Eagles hope shots start falling
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    As far as the Lady Eagles are concerned, their second season begins today when the Furman Paladins visit Hanner Fieldhouse for a 1 p.m. game.
    “Every game now means something,” Georgia Southern coach Rusty Cram said. “There’s no more taking things for granted or trying to get better. You have to play with everything you’ve got every night. We’ve got to get back in the race here and put a couple (wins) together, especially these next two home games.”
    Georgia Southern (5-7, 0-1 Southern Conference) will be vying for its first league win after dropping its SoCon opener to the College of Charleston earlier this month. The Eagles are also looking to get back on track offensively after a sub-par performance the last two times out. Shooting has been the focus of recent two-a-day practices, which began the day after Christmas.
    “We did some running to get our legs back under us,” junior Shawnda Atwood said. “We are just trying to get back in shape and hopefully our shots will fall.”
    Cram has been encouraged by the team’s practices, and he’s hoping those results will carry over to today’s game.
    “Like everybody else, I’ll be holding my breath to see if we hit a few buckets or not,” Cram said. “But when you are shooting around 20 percent the last two ball games, you are not really excited. There are some things you can tweak offensively, but that ball has to start going through the net. We just have to keep shooting until we shoot ourselves out of it. They’ve shot the ball well this week.”
    The Eagles will be up against a Furman team characterized by its aggressive zone defense, multiple sets and staunch pressure.
    “We expect it to be a hard game because they’ve got long arms,” sophomore Ashley Rivens said. “It’s going to be tough.”
    GSU is 4-2 in its last six games, which were all decided by seven points or less. Both the Eagles and the Paladins (5-7, 0-1) are looking to halt two-game losing streaks.
    “We definitely need this win just to pull us out of the slump from being 0-1 in the conference,” Atwood said. “We started off on a bad note, so being 1-1 will give us some high emotions.”