Khari Price adds boost to Southern Miss basketball

HATTIESBURG, Miss. - Guard, Khari Price played his first game of the season after suffering a knee injury, and things went well for him and the team.

"I have a true passion, a true love for this game, and not being able to play and seeing my brother's go through that type of pain, those types of losing streaks. It hurts me just like it hurts them," said Price.

Head coach, Doc Sadler said, "It's hard to put everything on one guy. But, I think you can just see the confidence in this basketball team from the minute that they found out Khari was going to play."

In the first half, Price scored nine points and had a total of 20 points for the game, which helped open up the offense, allowing forward, Quinton Campbell and guard, Cortez Edwards to score double-digit points.

"He just brings up a lot of energy. Every day at practice, even when he wasn't practicing, he was just coming over there talking to us, and I just knew it was going to transfer from practice onto the court," said Campbell.

The Golden Eagles outscored the Roadrunners by 24 points in the second half, which enabled them to beat UTSA, 77-59.

Price said "that goes back to coach putting four guards on the floor, which is hard to guard man. Each one of us can put the ball on the floor. Each one of us can pull up and shoot. Each one of us can make plays for other guys."

Offensively, you got a chance to see a little bit of what we're going to be doing. We just got to keep getting better at it," said Sadler.

Sadler said his team got more and more confident as the game went on, and he is hoping for a repeat performance Saturday against UTEP.

Tipoff is set for 4 p.m.