The Georgia Southern Lady Eagles (9-5) are a confident bunch heading into the opening of the Southern Conference volleyball season Friday at Wofford.

Even in the losses, the team has found some positives to build on.

“In some games that we lost, we should have won them looking (at the statistics),” said sophomore hitter Bethany Sanford. “It’s kind of upsetting that it didn’t come out as a win, but at the same time, those games were great games that at any moment could have been in our favor.”

After winning the first two games of the Bash in the Boro Tournament in mid-September against Wake Forest and Coastal Carolina, the Eagles fell to Auburn 2-3 in the final game, which came down to two points.

Georgia Southern started the season hot, sweeping the Holiday Inn Invitational in the season-opening tournament in Hanner Fieldhouse against Troy, Stetson and Presbyterian, and the only real blemish on the season thus far came in the following tournament in Fort Collins, Colo. at the Colorado State Classic, where they were swept by CSU, Ohio State and UT Arlington.

“Some of the schools around the country are used to jumping on a plane every week – flying in, flying out,” said GSU coach Chad Callihan. “I think we really had a difficult time. For five of our kids, it was the first away match ever and we were relying pretty heavily on some of those kids. Those were factors. I still think we could have executed better than we did, but we learned from it.”

The Eagles have won six out of the last eight and are 5-1 on the floor at Hanner. A lot of the success is due to Sanford, who won SoCon Player of the Week twice in the first three weeks of the season.

“I think it really shows the effort she’s made to improve her game,” Callihan said. “She wasn’t even voted as one of the preseason players to watch in the conference, so she’s definitely improved a lot in people’s eyes in the course of a year.”

Sanford hopes the rest of the conference has taken notice of what the GSU program has accomplished.

“We’re working really hard to turn the volleyball program here around,” she said, “so I hope we’re sending a message to other teams that, ‘Here we come. We’re about to give you a good game – possibly win.’”

The Eagles begin SoCon play Friday when they travel on a three-game SoCon road trip. It starts at Wofford, who is at the top of the SoCon south posting a 12-2 record thus far, and then goes to defending SoCon champion Furman, but GSU isn’t worried about that. The Eagles are just worried about themselves.

“When you play another team, it doesn’t matter what they have. It matters what you do,” Sanford said. “Right now in practice, we’re just focused on how we block, how we transition, how we dig. It’s more us than anything.”

Right now, the SoCon is anyone’s for the taking.

“I think we just have to go in it with the mindset that everyone’s even right now,” said Cristin Haines, senior libero whose job is primarily back-row defense. “They’re coming in with a momentum boost, but we’ve played some really good teams and we have some really good wins, so we have momentum too. We just have to focus on ourselves.”

Haines, a junior-college transfer and the only senior on the roster, put her name in the GSU record books in her first season last year, finishing the year third all-time in digs (518) and digs per game (4.28). Her season match high (39) came against Toledo on Sept. 20, 2008.

The Eagles face WC at 7 p.m. Friday and then head to Furman Saturday for a 2 p.m. match. The road trip wraps up Saturday, Oct. 3 at Chattanooga at 2 p.m.

Fortunately, GSU hasn’t played since Saturday’s 3-2 win over Gardner-Webb.

“Having a full week to prepare is hopefully going to help us,” said Callihan. “We know where our attention needs to be placed. Hopefully now it’s just a matter of getting it executed and fixed before Friday. If we do, I think it will be a good weekend for us.”

Matt Yogus can be reached at (912) 489-9408.