FGCU And FIU Agree To Four Year Basketball Series

(Courtesy of Linwood Ferguson)

Florida Gulf Coast will start a four year men's basketball series with FIU, Eagles athletic director Ken Kavanagh announced on Tuesday.

This season, Florida International will start the series by visiting FGCU on Dec. 14, at 2 p.m. Then, the Eagles will headed to FIU in 2015 and 2017, while the Golden Panthers return to Dunk City in 2016.

With the Golden Panthers and Eagles participating in a home-and-home series the past two years, this deal guarantees the two teams will play for six years, straight.

In 2012, FGCU defeated FIU, 76-73, behind double digit scoring efforts from Chase Fieler, Bernard Thompson, Brett Comer, and Christophe Varide. Last year however, the Eagles shot an abysmal 2 for 14 from beyond the arc and fell 72-61 to FIU.

FGCU has 10 non-conference opponents set for the 2014-15 season. They play host to Furman (Dec. 18), FIU (Dec. 14), and UCSB on an unknown date. The Eagles also return the Gauchos favor and head to UC Santa Barbara for the second game of the series. In addition to three games at the Gulf Coast Showcase (Nov. 24-26), they also have 'guarantee' games at Xavier, and Pittsburgh, as well as a visit to Iona.

With the strongest roster in program history, Florida Gulf Coast has had trouble finding willing opponents.

"We're in that situation where we've gotten more successful so teams are more leery of coming to play us because they know how hard it is to win at Alico Arena," Kavanagh said.

Kavanagh and FGCU have relentlessly tried to add fellow Sunshine State schools to their schedule, seeing the benefits for both participants.

"Unfortunately right now there's been a reluctance by most of those schools to play us. It's disappointing we'd think it'd be a good game for those schools from a marketing and RPI standpoint," Kavanagh said. "Many of those schools have FGCU alums in the area. We have pockets of FGCU fans everywhere. When we played FIU, that was probably one of their biggest crowds of the year."

CHECK OUT THE EAGLES' 2014-15 SCHEDULE

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