2008 Woodie Awards
Men's basketball team loses five consecutive PBC games
Kim Gailliard
Issue date: 2/4/08 Section: Sports
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The latest was an overtime loss at home, 71-64, to North Georgia College & State University on Feb. 2. On Jan. 30, the men lost at Lander University, 76-57, and they also lost Jan. 26 on the road against Clayton State University.
The Patriots (8-9, 2-8) are near the bottom of the Peach Belt Conference (PBC) rankings. Only the University of North Carolina at Pembroke (7-11, 2-9) has a weaker record.
Still, Coach Gary Edwards thinks the team has time to improve their record by the time they compete in the PBC tournament.
"We're still in that process of trying to be competitive," Edwards said. "Hopefully, when we do get to the end of the (season), we'll be playing our best basketball and that will allow us to compete with the better teams in the conference."
Four days before dropping the game at Clayton State, the Patriots lost a hard-fought game at home against nationally-ranked Augusta State University (ASU).
Entering that game, the team was 2-4 in PBC play, yet Edwards said he didn't feel the game was a must-win for the team.
"I wouldn't say it's a must-win, but it would be a good win for the program," Edwards said prior to the game.
ASU set the tempo of the game early with an explosive 5-0 start. During the first 20 minutes, the Jaguars shot 57.7 percent from the floor.
The Patriots never held the lead the entire game, and the Jaguars took a 43-29 lead at halftime.
At the start of the second quarter, the Patriots came out more energized than they had in previous contests.
Edwards said that was something the team has been working on.
"There've been many games where we seem to have a let down in the second half," Edwards said. "We need to sustain what we're doing for 40 minutes… it's all part of being mentally and physically tougher."
Senior forward Rod Burton said Edwards' halftime pep talk got through to the team.
"He said we could play with them," Burton said. "We just needed to box out more and do a few more things and we would have won the game."
There was some concern that questionable officiating might have caused FMU to lose some opportunities to win the game.
"We wanted to be aggressive but the refs were very, very conservative," junior guard Houston Power said.
Though he felt the game was "tightly officiated," Edwards said he was pleased with the amount of fight his team showed against the second best team in the conference.
"I was proud of the guys and the way they competed," Edwards said. "We had a few bad possessions, but to cut it down to four (points) with almost seven minutes to go (shows) we could have been in the hunt."
He sees the loss as a learning experience.
"I would hope the way we played would give us some confidence to compete with the elite teams in our conference and now we've learn how to do that," Edwards said.
Burton agreed.
"It's like a stepping stone," Burton said. "We're climbing up the ladder and if we play like we did in the second half we can win because we're a good enough team."
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