By Jim O'Hara

ROME, Ga. – The preliminaries are over.

From now on, each time the Shorter Hawks and Lady Hawks basketball team step on the court until the regular season ends they will be facing one Gulf South Conference test after another.

On Saturday afternoon, the two teams begin that long GSC haul when the Lady Hawks (1-4) and the Hawks (3-3) host conference foe West Georgia at the Winthrop-King Centre with the women squaring off at 2 p.m. and the men doing battle in a 4 p.m. tip-off.

"Everyone in our league is good," Hawks head coach Chad Warner said about the first GSC outing of the season and the first of three straight GSC games Shorter's men and women will play before the Christmas break. "West Georgia is certainly one. It will be a great challenge for us but it's one we're excited about."

West Georgia's Wolves have certainly served notice that they can be considered a team to watch this year in the GSC as they enter the game boasting a solid 7-1 record that doesn't include an impressive exhibition outing last month in Tuscaloosa, Ala., where they held their own in a one-point loss to Alabama.

Unlike the Hawks, who haven't played since Nov. 25, the Wolves are coming off a 79-77 overtime win over Paine last Saturday, a game that featured an impressive showing by junior Stephan Thompson when the 6-foot-6 forward connected for a career-high 29 points.

That outing helped give Thompson this week's GSC Player of the Week honor and for the season he leads UWG averaging 17.8 points and 9.3 rebounds a game. As a team, the Wolves average 73 points and give up 64 a game.

The Hawks will end their lengthy break having won two of their last three games, the last one coming 18 days ago when Shorter rolled past College of Faith 104-81 and showed that despite missing some key cogs they can find the offense that averages 95 points.

Junior guard Dedric Ware heads up the attach averaging 19.5 points along with 4.7 assists, while four other Hawks are averaging in double digits – senior Kurtis Woods (19.3), senior Brandon Pullman (12.2), red-short freshman Jordan Jacks (11.8) and junior Travis Jones (10.7.) Jacks and Pullman also hold their own under the boards where they have pulled down respective 10 and 7.2 rebounds a game.

Still, the Hawks have been playing without a pair of NCAA Division I transfers who are still healing from injuries sustained during preseason – 6-5 junior Xavier Owens (Mount St. Mary's) and 6-10 junior Derrick Martin (Duquesne) – while Woods has been hampered by an ankle injury.

"It's been hard to get any consistency because we've had some injuries and we've had a long layoff," Warner said. "Hopefully we can get one or two guys back but if we don't we have to learn to play together and overcome it."

For the Lady Hawks, coming together has been a process they have had to work on in order to overcome a loss to a senior veteran before they started the regular season when Lindsey Crawford was lost for the season when she suffered a knee injury in Shorter's exhibition against Mississippi State.

"We are still adjusting to that," Lady Hawks head coach Vic Mitchell said. "We also haven't been consistent on defense and offense. You have to make up for not having someone like Lindsey in there by committee. Everybody has to do more.

"I hope as a coach," he added, "that those tough out-of-conference games have toughened us up."

After opening the season with a win over Montevallo, the Lady Hawks have been on the losing end of their last four games but most noticeable is that all of the setbacks were against Division II foes and were decided by 10 points or less, the most recent a 57-64 loss to defending SIAC champion Clark-Atlanta.

Giving the Lady Hawks the offensive boost has been senior Karisma Boykin, who leads the team averaging 16.6 points and 3.2 assists, while junior Ieshia Alexander is providing 15.6 point a game.

Senior Kristin Nash adds to the offensive threat averaging 8.8 and senior Lynette Harris has stepped up her play inside averaging 8.5 points and a team-high 7.8 rebounds, with freshman Shaundrika Mann adding help inside by pulling down 5.6 rebounds a game.

"We've had a tough out-of-conference schedule," Mitchell said, "but you want to get yourself ready for the conference games."

Facing the Lady Hawks in the GSC opener is a West Georgia squad that is 2-4, but has tasted victory in two of its last three games, the latest a 75-57 win over Morris on Dec. 6. Leading the Wolves has been Taylor Turgeon, who averages 12.2 points a game.

"We addressed the things we needed to work on," Mitchell said about how the team used the long layoff. "We need to correct it because it won't correct itself. The big thing is that we need to make critical plays down the stretch."

That stretch begins against West Georgia, which is followed by two more GSC home games for the Hawks and Lady Hawks on Dec. 18 against Union and on Dec. 20 against North Alabama. The Lady Hawks also have one last non-conference tilt when they visit Clark-Atlanta on Dec. 16.

Following Shorter's clash against UNA, the teams break for Christmas and return to action in the first week of the new year with GSC road games, facing Christian Brothers on Jan. 4 in Memphis, Tenn., then Delta State in Cleveland, Miss., on Jan. 6.

"Now we can focus on just basketball and basketball only," Mitchell said. "The next week is real important. It's time to play."