Men's Basketball | 3/8/2017 4:11:00 PM

Georgia Southern (18-13, 11-7) vs. Troy (19-14, 10-8) - Sun Belt Championship
Friday, March 10 - Lakefront Arena (10,000) – New Orleans, La. - 8:30 p.m. ET
Television: ESPN3
Buy Tickets | Live Video | Live Audio  | Live Stats | Bracket | Championship Central
Radio: WMCD 107.3 FM (Statesboro), 105.5 FM WIFO (Jesup), 100.9 FM WLYU (Lyons), 103.7 FM WBMZ (Metter), 900 AM WJLG (Savannah)
Series: GS leads 13-7, L1
Last Meeting: L, 83-76 (A)
Probable Starters:
#2 Mike Hughes
#3 Ike Smith
#4 Tookie Brown
#10 Jake Allsmiller
#14 Coye Simmons

Georgia Southern Information:
[Stats] [Roster] [Schedule] [Game Notes]

Troy Information:
[Stats] [Roster] [Schedule]

Setting the Scene
• Georgia Southern enters the Sun Belt Tournament as the third seed after posting an 11-7 conference record. It's the second time the Eagles have finished in the top-3 in their three seasons in the league.
• GS will meet #6 Troy Friday, March 10, at 8:30 p.m. ET., and the game will be broadcast live on ESPN3 with Matt Stewart and Bob Donewald calling the action.
• Georgia Southern and Troy split the season series with each winning at home. The Eagles have won three out of four and are 3-3 against the Trojans since joining the Sun Belt. Each of the last seven meetings in the series have been decided by seven points or less.
• GS is 2-3 in its last five and coming off a 72-67 loss at Georgia State in the regular-season finale Saturday afternoon.
• The Eagles capped the season with five of their last seven games on the road and went 2-4 during the stretch.
• Friday's game will be Georgia Southern's second in the last 11 days.
• Georgia Southern is 8-11 away from home this season and 2-0 on a neutral floor. Both of those games were played in the Savannah Civic Center in November.
• Georgia Southern features the Sun Belt's top two scorers in sophomores Ike Smith (19.7 ppg) and Tookie Brown (17.5 ppg). The 2017 first-team All-Sun Belt selections were the third-highest freshman scoring duo in the country last year (1-Rice's Marcus Evans and Marquez Letcher-Ellis, 2- FSU's Dwayne Bacon and Malik Beasley).
• Georgia Southern makes its 37th appearance in a Division I conference tournament this year, and the Eagles are playing in their 21st-straight conference tournament. Georgia Southern is 29-32 all-time in conference tourneys, 1-2 in the Sun Belt Tournament, 19-10 as the higher seed, 4-5 as the third seed and 11-19 in quarterfinal games.
• All games of the tournament will be available on ESPN3 and the WatchESPN app with Sunday's championship game slated for a national broadcast at 2 p.m. ET on ESPN2.

The Series vs. Troy
• Georgia Southern leads the all-time series, which began in 1932, 13-7 and has won three of the last four.
• Each of the last seven meetings have been decided by seven points or less.
• The teams have never met in the Sun Belt Tournament, and the series is tied 3-3 since the Eagles joined the Sun Belt in 2014.
• Eight of the Eagles' wins were recorded before 1964 as the teams played 13 times between 1932 and 1964.
• The series was renewed in 1991 with the Eagles earning a 102-94 home win.

More Team Storylines
• Georgia Southern has no seniors in its rotation and starts three juniors and two sophomores. Walk-ons James Holder and Dominique Bullock are the team's lone seniors.
• Georgia Southern's top-3 seasons in 3-pointers made and attempted have all come during Mark Byington's tenure. GS ranks first in the SBC in threes per game (9.4) and 31st in the country this season, and the Eagles have made 10 or more threes 15 times. GS's .370 percentage from long distance is the seventh-highest in school history.
• Georgia Southern ranks second in the Sun Belt in fewest turnovers and  turnovers per game. The Eagles have logged single-digit turnovers in eight games and posted a season-low six vs. Troy (1/7).
• Ike Smith and Tookie Brown were named first-team All-Sun Belt. Brown earned first-team accolades for the second straight season.
• The Eagles started 7-0 in league play for the first time since the 1991-92 campaign. GS won its first nine games in the Trans America Athletic Conference that year. 
• GS posted an eight-game win streak from Dec. 2-Jan. 23. It's the Eagles' longest since the 2005-06 season. 
• Three Eagles have been named Sun Belt Player of the Week - Tookie Brown (Jan. 3), Ike Smith (Jan. 24) and Mike Hughes (Feb. 7).
• GS is averaging 76.5 points a game this season. The Eagles have scored over 80 12 times, including six straight games from 12/20-1/14, and have scored over 90 five times, including two in a row Jan. 21 and 23. It's the first time the Eagles scored 90-plus points in back-to-back Division I games since Feb. 11 and Feb. 13, 2006.
• The Eagles won their first two conference road games for the first time since the 2002-03 season.
• The Eagles have shot 50 percent or better in a half in 20 games this season, including 60 percent or better three times. The Eagles have shot 50 percent or better in both halves of a game twice (GSU, 12/31 and CCU, 1/23). The Eagles have shot 50 percent or better in six games. 
• GS ranks third in the Sun Belt in made free throws and in free-throw attempts. The Eagles have attempted 30-plus free throws in six games and made 20-plus free throws in seven contests.
• GS has a combined record of 34-17 in Sun Belt games played in January and February since joining the league in 2014-15.
• Georgia Southern returned all five starters and 11 lettermen from last season's squad. Ninety-four percent of the Eagles' scoring and rebounding is back in uniform.
• Georgia Southern was picked fourth in the Sun Belt Preseason Coaches Poll, Tookie Brown was named preseason first-team all-league and Mike Hughes earned second-team honors.
• Mark Byington is coaching in his 139th career game today and his 128th at Georgia Southern. His 51 wins in his first three seasons at Georgia Southern are the best of any coach in the modern era. He posted a 7-4 record at College of Charleston in 2012, filling in as the interim coach for Bobby Cremins.
• Under Mark Byington, Georgia Southern is 48-11 in games when leading at half and 58-5 when leading with five minutes to go.
• Georgia Southern is 33-8 in Hanner Fieldhouse in its last 41 contests there and 40-14 under Mark Byington.
• GS has reached double digit wins in conference play in each of its three seasons in the Sun Belt.
• Since joining the Sun Belt in 2014, 29 Georgia Southern games against Sun Belt schools have been decided by five points or less, and the Eagles are 19-10.
• The Eagles are 26-5 in Sun Belt games when leading at halftime. GS is 27-1 when leading with five minutes to go.
• Georgia Southern's comeback from 16 points down at ULM (1/16) is the Eagles' largest since a 17-point rally vs. UTA March 5, 2015.
• GS finished the non-conference portion of its schedule with a 7-6 record, its first winning record in non-conference play since 2014-15 when the Eagles went 8-3. It's just the second time in the last eight seasons that the Eagles were above .500 in non-conference games.
• Georgia Southern played six non-conference games against five teams that are currently in the top-100 in the NCAA RPI (Akron - 59, FGCU - 86, Minn - 20, Winthrop - 70). FGCU and Winthrop won their league tournaments and earned spots in the NCAA Tournament. Sun Belt leader UTA owns an RPI of 40.
• The Eagles played 10 of their first 12 games away from home. The stretch ended Dec. 20 at Winthrop, which also capped a four-game road trip that covered 4,120 miles of travel as the Eagles went from Minnesota to Ft. Myers to Miami to South Carolina and back home. 
• GS played three contests in Savannah this season and won all three. The Eagles defeated Florida A&M (83-72) and Radford (65-64) in the Savannah Invitational and won 94-75 at Savannah State.
• The Eagles picked up the 1,200th win in the history of the program, which began play in 1926-27, when they topped Coastal Georgia 92-43 Nov. 14.
• GS held Coastal Georgia to 23.1 percent shooting from the field, the lowest for an opponent since holding North Georgia to 22.7 percent in 2003.
• Georgia Southern used 11 different combinations of starting lineups last year. GS has used six this season.

Talking 1K
• Sophomore Tookie Brown scored his 1,000th career point at Appalachian State Feb. 13. 
• He is the first Eagle in the program's modern era to reach the mark as a sophomore. Two Eagles did it in their second seasons at Georgia Southern (Elton Nesbitt and Johnny Mills).
• Junior Mike Hughes has 982 points, and sophomore Ike Smith has 967.
• Three Eagles reached the mark in the same season once. Nesbitt, Terry Williams and Jean Francois scored their 1,000th point in 2004-05.
• The 2004-05 trio and Jelani Hewitt, Eric Ferguson and Trent Wiedeman in 2014-15 are the only times Georgia Southern had three 1,000-point scorers on the same team (Wiedeman scored 886 points at College of Charleston before transferring to GS).

The 2017 Sun Belt Conference Men's and Women's Basketball Championships are scheduled for a week of March Madness in the Big Easy.  New Orleans will once again be home to the two championships that will take place at Lakefront Arena from March 7-12 and ticket books can now be purchased from the Georgia Southern ticket office.  For more information, visit the Sun Belt Conference's championship central websites - Men's Championship – Women's Championship – and be sure to follow the #FunBelt on social media - @SunBelt.

Georgia Southern Athletics provides up-to-date information on all its sports through its official website, GSEagles.com, through social media channels facebook.com/GSAthletics, twitter.com/GSAthletics, iOS app Georgia Southern Eagles and Android app Eagles GATA. For tickets to Georgia Southern athletics events, visit GSEagles.com/tickets.