For nearly the first 20 minutes of Monday night’s contest against Philadelphia’s George Washington, Liberty looked like the better team, but by the time the ’Canes second game of the first annual Parkland Holiday Classic was over, they were far from the team that started the evening.

The Hurricanes saw an even score at halftime, slowly slip away from their grasp in the final 16 minutes, losing 62-40 Monday night.

It was the fourth straight loss for the Hurricanes (4-6, 3-2), who also lost to LaSalle College 64-43 on Sunday night.

“We knew they [George Washington] had a lot of athletes and we did a good job of staying patient in the first half, but there was a stretch in the fourth quarter where they really out-played us,” said Liberty head coach Chad Landis. “We didn’t guard well, rebound well or run our offense well in that stretch and that’s kind of been our M.O. this season. We play well in stretches and then we don’t play well in stretches.”

Liberty jumped out to a 10-0 lead and then led 14-4 after the first quarter, but the Eagles used a 16-1 run in the second quarter to take a 16-15 lead, which eventually turned into a 24-apiece scoreline at intermission.

GW then added a 10-0 spurt in the third quarter to take a five-point lead until Cameron Hoffman scored a field goal with 1:25 left in the quarter to pull Liberty within 34-31.

Liberty trailed 36-33 entering the fourth after Amir Griffin beat the buzzer, but that was the last time the Hurricanes would hang with their Philadelphia counterparts, as they gave up 26 points in the fourth quarter, many of which came from an up tempo pace from the Eagles, who took advantage of Liberty misses and turned one-shot Hurricane possessions into fast break buckets.

“When they got it going up and down the court, they were way better than us,” said Landis of GW’s torrid fourth. “We’ve talked about consistency a bunch now and we just have to stay consistent with our effort and execution.”

Hoffman was the only Hurricane to hit double figures on the night, tallying 13 points for Liberty, while GW had three guys hit double digits, led by Shameed Fagain’s 13.

With four straight losses to Pocono Mountain West, Spring-Ford, LaSalle and George Washington, Liberty has certainly run into a tough stretch of their schedule, but Landis understands that.

Part of the reason the ’Canes schedule difficult non-conference games is to learn from them, which is something they’ll see when they get back into action next week.

“We scheduled good teams to prepare us for the season down the stretch,” said Landis. “Now we have to see what these guys took from this experience. We’ll see how they respond.”