University of Southern Mississippi Athletics
Men's Basketball Begins Road Swing at UTSA on Thursday
2/8/2017 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
HATTIESBURG, Miss. -- The Southern Miss men's basketball team plays five of its last seven regular-season games on the road, and it all begins Thursday night in San Antonio against the UTSA Roadrunners.
The 7 p.m. game will air on Spectrum Sports, featuring Kit McConnico and Jeff Power on the call. The network is available in several markets nationwide, and more information can be found here. Fans can also tune in to John Cox and the Southern Miss IMG Sports Network (Rock 104.5 in Hattiesburg/Laurel).
- Southern Miss' Conference USA stretch run continues with a two-game trip to Texas. Thursday's game against UTSA carries plenty of significance in how the home team has won all six of the all-time meetings, and the Jan. 5 meeting between the two schools featured infinite inspiration for the Golden Eagles as redshirt-senior Khari Price made his season debut after his knee surgery in the fall.
- Price tied a career-high 20 points in that 77-59 win over the Roadrunners, including a three-pointer in front of the home bench with a minute remaining for an exclamation point. Cortez Edwards also produced a career-high 13 rebounds, just the second-such instance for a Golden Eagle since 2013. UTSA began the night with five three-pointers on its first nine attempts but was held to 0-for-11 in the second half.
- Southern Miss' bench has outscored its opponent's in three of the last five games, most notably a 38-5 advantage against Marshall on Thursday (a big contributor in the Golden Eagles scoring 38 of the game's final 53 points). That served as a spotlight on the recent play of Eddie Davis III (whose 17 points tied the career-high he set at Florida State), Bilal Abdur-Rahim and D'Angelo Richardson.
- Abdur-Rahim still holds a solid 54 percent shooting mark on the year (35-for-65), and both of his double-figure games this year have come in league play (12 versus LA Tech, 10 versus Marshall). Richardson had played seven minutes over the course of five games, but has accumulated 112 over the most-recent six. Not only that, his 15 assists in the Jan. 19-Feb. 2 span were the most on the team.
- Edwards has started every game since Dec. 22 and has truly played above the rim and between all sidelines and baselines since the season began. Edwards' overall field goal percentage has improved 15 points since his freshman season, and the 6-foot-2 Floridian has produced two 12-plus rebound games since the Jan. 5 UTSA meeting. Edwards also had five assists in Saturday's game versus WKU, his fifth, five-assist performance of the year. Quinton Campbell has been the other key force behind Southern Miss' success, averaging 17.9 ppg in victories.
- Southern Miss is averaging 7.6 three-pointers per game in Thursday C-USA games, and the Marshall contest last Thursday saw the Golden Eagles tie a season-high with 18 assists. Saturday's WKU game saw just nine turnovers, the fourth time this year the Golden Eagles kept in single-digits there.
- UTSA plays its best at home and can make the case as having the toughest home-court advantage in Conference USA. The Roadrunners are 9-1 inside the Convocation Center, with its only loss coming by 10 points last Thursday to first-place Middle Tennessee. They then followed it up with an 82-67 win over UAB.
- Southern Miss (39.5 percent) and UTSA (38.3 percent) are right next to each other in the C-USA games-only leaderboard for field goal percentage, but the Roadrunners are second in rebounding with 38.4 per game. Jeff Beverly is making his case for an All-Conference pick with 18.3 ppg (fifth in the league) as well as his respectable 6.7 rebounds per game.
