STATESBORO, Ga. - The Georgia Southern women's basketball team will play its lone exhibition contest of the 2017-18 season on Tuesday, welcoming in Fort Valley State for a 6:30 p.m. tilt at Hanner Fieldhouse.

The Eagles have made steady improvement in Head Coach Kip Drown's two seasons at the helm of the program, rising from 11th to 6th in the Sun Belt Conference standings. To take another step in 2017-18, Georgia Southern will be relying on a squad that returns just two starters and features nine underclassmen among its 14 student-athletes. Tuesday's exhibition will be a good litmus test to see how the team starts to play together against another squad.

"As a whole group, collectively, I see us maturing as the group plays together," Coach Drown said. "We've got some things that are only going to show up when you play against someone else. We're anxious to get to this exhibition so we can have a couple of weeks to go back and say, 'here's some areas we need to get better at.' The game comes at a great time for us, and our team is really looking forward to it."

Fort Valley State is an NCAA Division II team from nearby Fort Valley, Ga., that competes in the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference. The Wildcats are also a very young squad with nine of 11 players either sophomores or freshman. Head Coach Le'Coe Willingham is a 10-year veteran of the WNBA who will be making her collegiate head coaching debut on Tuesday. She is the seventh-leading scorer in Auburn University women's basketball history.

Admission is free to the exhibition on Tuesday and fans can follow along with all the action via live stats on GSEagles.com.