Ryan Harrow scored a game-high 20 points to lead Georgia State to a 72-45 victory over Arkansas State on Saturday in the semifinals of the Sun Belt men’s basketball tournament.
The Panthers (25-7), the conference’s regular-season champion, need just one more win to clinch an automatic berth in the NCAA tournament. They will take on the winner of the other semifinal between Louisiana-Lafayette and Western Kentucky at 1 p.m. Sunday in the championship game.
Georgia State has won 22 of its past 23 games.
Because the Panthers won both of the regular-season meetings between the teams by a combined four points, expectations were that Saturday’s game would be close.
But Arkansas State was trying to recover from needing four overtimes to knock off Arkansas-Little Rock in Friday’s quarterfinal game and the Red Wolves ran out of gas in the second half.
Momentum started to turn in Georgia State’s favor early in the second half. Harrow picked Rakeem Dickerson’s dribble and raced in for a layup. Arkansas State coach John Brady erupted and the Red Wolves’ bench was called for a technical foul. Hunter hit one of the two free throws to give the Panthers a 44-31 lead with 15:58 left
Kendrick Washington, a forward who was leading the Red Wolves with 10 points, picked up his fourth foul a few minutes later trying to stop Markus Crider on a drive with 14:27 left.
Crider, Georgia State’s most effective big man, picked up his third foul followed less than a minute later by his fourth foul on a defensive rebound with 12:56 left.
But Georgia State didn’t need him.
Devonta White and Harrow combined to score eight consecutive points, and Manny Atkins added two more, to push Georgia State’s lead to 58-38 with less than eight minutes remaining.
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