Khadrice Rollins
krollins@ajc.com
It’s a new day at Georgia State.
After nearly four seasons with Trent Miles as the lead man for the Panthers, the team officially stepped into a new era when coach Shawn Elliott was hired Thursday and introduced at a press conference Friday.
For the players that are graduating and the coaches who will not be kept on Elliott’s staff, their past years at GSU will be something they said they will treasure dearly.
“There’s been so many great experiences,” wide receiver Robert Davis said. “Obviously the people that I’ve met is really one thing that sticks out to me because I probably would have never met those people otherwise.”
Davis leaves the program as the career leader in receptions and reception yards and his streak of 49 consecutive games with a catch to close out his career was the longest active streak in FBS. He is a member of one of the classes that experienced GSU’s first FBS win, bowl appearance and victory over rival Georgia Southern.
As Davis moves on with his career and possibly makes the jump to the NFL, he said he expects to see the players who he is leaving behind take the program to even higher levels.
These players however now must adjust to a new regime. A staff of coaches that did not recruit them to come to GSU, but instead inherited them.
The coaches who helped make all the current players Panthers will now watch these players close out their GSU careers watch from afar, as the coaches move on to new positions at new schools — something the players had been fearful of since Miles was let go in November. But the coaches said simply getting to work with these guys even though they couldn’t see it all the way through was a good experience.
“This profession, there’s good and bad, there’s ups and downs, but it’s about the relationships,” former defensive coordinator Jesse Minter. “With the people of Georgia State, with the fans, but most of all with the players. Those are the guys that when something bad happens, they’re the first to reach out to you. They’re more worried about us knowing what’s happening in this situation.”
Tim Lappano, the interim head coach when Miles was removed, told the team from his first day in charge to treat the remainder of the season as a job interview. Lappano said the players and coaches were all auditioning to remain at GSU and to make sure that “they put it all on film” for whoever was going to be evaluating them at the end of the year.
A win over Georgia Southern and a loss at his alma mater Idaho were not enough to keep Lappano around, but in his short time in Atlanta, he has seen major growth from GSU and expects that trend to continue.
“We have good kids here,” Lappano said. “That’s obvious by the way they handled the transition. I think there’s good kids here. … This program is a lot better off right now today then it was when I walked into these doors three years ago.”
