Southern Miss basketball was already lacking in depth. It’s now down 2 key players.

Basketball is a physically draining sport, and it’s toughest on the legs.

So, when a team that is struggling to begin with loses key players, it can be difficult to overcome, and that’s where the Southern Miss men find themselves at the halfway point in the Conference USA season.

For the third time this season and for the second time in a week, the Golden Eagles played just seven players, and that was a key in USM’s 68-58 defeat against Old Dominion Thursday night at Reed Green Coliseum.

Southern Miss dropped to 6-16 overall and 2-7 in conference. ODU improved to 9-13 and 5-4.

“The first part of the second half, I thought we played very well,” said Golden Eagle head coach Jay Ladner. “We got the lead, but we expended a lot of injury and we just ran out of gas.”

The Golden Eagles are playing short-handed after redshirt sophomore Jay Malone and junior David McCoy were suspended from the team after poor classroom performance. Ladner said neither will return to the team this season.

“They didn’t meet the standards of the university and the basketball program in terms of academics,” said Ladner. “Hopefully, they will learn their lesson. It’s important to have standards, especially this first season, in terms of the way things are done.

“But that’s put us short, obviously. That’s put some guys in some spots they’re not used to being in. Gabe Watson, who’s played off the ball all year, is now having to play at the point, and playing 40 minutes a game. That’s tough.”

The loss of Malone has been especially acute. A 6-foot guard who transferred from Southwest Mississippi Community College, Malone started 15 games and had his best game, a 27-point effort against Rice, in his last game before his suspension.

Against the Monarchs, the lack of depth was telling. The Golden Eagles had four starters log at least 36 minutes.

Nevertheless, the Golden Eagles once again played hard, overcoming a 15-point first-half deficit against ODU with a big second-half surge. Junior shooting guard LaDavius Draine keyed USM’s surge with 22 points, 20 in the second half.

Draine hit three of four 3-point shots coming out of the halftime locker room, as the Golden Eagles opened the second half with a 9-1 spurt, after trailing at intermission 33-23.

“Coach just told us to pick up the pace on offense,” said Draine. “We were stopping them, but we weren’t converting on the other end. We just had to do a better job on both ends.”

USM played consistent defense for most of the game, but their defensive intensity was off the charts to start the second half.

“Coach told us to pressure the ball hard and get them out of the flow of their offense,” said sophomore forward Tyler Stevenson, who finished with 18 points and 10 rebounds. “When we started doing that, they started turning the ball over, and we had a good little run on offense.”

USM showed a pretty effective full-court press during their second-half run, but that was where the Golden Eagles lack of depth was telling.

“We just do the best we can,” Ladner said. “Obviously, it limits some things that we want to do defensively.

“We would like to press a little more than we are able to right now. It did affect them offensively. We would like to have done it a little earlier. When you press, you have to have numbers, but it got to a point where we just had to do it.”

With Draine firing on all cylinders, and the Golden Eagles playing tough defense, USM used a 10-4 run to take the lead, 47-46, on a soft, four-foot jump shot by Stevenson with 9:13 to play.

But ODU’s A.J. Oliver came right back down to hit another 3-point shot for the Monarchs, and that was the exact point when the Golden Eagles sputtered to a halt.

USM went more than seven minutes without scoring, while the Monarchs went on a 17-0 surge to take control.

“A couple of turnovers, a couple of missed shots,” said Draine. “They were coming down, getting the ball inside, we had a couple of fouls and they bogged us down a bit.”

ODU did an effective job of switching defenses from a man-to-man to a zone, especially in the first half, but when the Monarchs went to a stifling 3-2 zone exclusively, it took the Golden Eagles out of their offense.

“I was hoping we could build a four, or six, eight-point lead, then try to control it down the stretch,” said Ladner. “We were close, but we were just a few possessions short of that defensively. They went on a run and took the wind out of our sails.”

ODU was also effective from 3-point range, converting 10 of 28 shots from behind the arc. Malik Curry led the Monarchs with 18 points and Oliver had 17, including four 3-pointers.

Playing short-handed has taken its toll on the seven on the team that play the majority of the minutes, but as Ladner said, “that’s the team we have.”

“It’s pretty tough,” said Stevenson. “But we’ve still got to come together as a team and keep playing hard, with all the players we have to make sure we stay gelled together.”

And it was Draine who said it best.

“We’re used to it,” said Draine. “We’ve been doing it all year.”

The Golden Eagles will be home again on Saturday, when they host Charlotte in a 2 p.m. tipoff.