The Georgia Southern men’s basketball team tips off the 2025-26 season Tuesday evening at East Carolina. The Eagles are coming off a 17-15 season in coach Charlie Henry’s second season, which included an impressive 11-3 mark in their first season at “The Hill.”

Once again Eagle basketball fans will need a program to keep up with all the new faces. The Eagles return only two players familiar to Eagle Nation in Nakavieon White and Tyren Moore, who is rejoining the Eagles after a year at UAB last season.

“The beauty of college basketball is you get a lot of time with these guys before the season starts and I feel like it has been productive,” Henry said. “There are a lot of new guys, but I feel like we are talented and there is a lot of excitement within the program. I think we have a lot of guys who want to prove they can play at this level and from a team standpoint they want to do it together.”

Henry knows the struggles of dealing with the transfer portal and NIL in this new climate of collegiate athletics, but is optimistic about the team developing chemistry as the season progresses.

“We want to try and retain guys, but it’s just the nature of college basketball at this time where we are at that you are going to have turnover to deal with,” Henry said. “We hope that we can be an outlier, but the good thing about the Sun Belt is there are not a lot of returning players. There is not one all-conference selection back from last season.”

As far as the strengths of this year’s squad Henry feels they will be solid on defense and he expects this team to succeed from behind the arc.

“We have Tyren back and Nakavieon White, but no one else with playing experience here at Georgia Southern,” Henry said. “It’s a new group but we are trying to expedite the learning curve. We have more shooting than we have had in a while. We have a group who can really move the ball and I think we are going to make a big jump on defense. The four top teams in our league were the top teams on defense so we know we will have to take another step there to compete for the top spots.”

Georgia Southern tips off the season at East Carolina Nov. 4 at 7 p.m. and will hold their home opener on Saturday, Nov. 8 against UNC Asheville at 3 p.m.