Louisiana Lafayette beats Georgia Southern, 87-78

LAFAYETTE, La. (AP) Senior Kasey Shepherd scored 20 points on Senior Night and cemented a first-round bye in the Sun Belt Conference tournament that begins Thursday by knocking off Georgia Southern, 87-78 in the regular season finale Saturday.

The Ragin' Cajuns will have the No. 4 seed into the conference tournament and, along with Texas-Arlington, will have a first-round bye.

Louisiana Lafayette took a 38-35 lead at intermission, but the Eagles battled back to take several brief leads in the second half. Georgia Southern cut the lead to three points on a three-point play by Tookie Brown with 4:32 left in the game, but Devonta Walker answered with a layup and Hayward Register collected a steal and a layup to make it 76-69 with 3:54 left.

Walker finished with 16 points for Louisiana Lafayette (16-13, 12-8).

Brown paced Georgia Southern (14-16, 10-10) with 25 points and Mike Hughes added 22.