In a feat of good coaching, good chemistry and a little luck, coach Ron Hunter said Georgia State’s men’s basketball team is peaking as it reaches the Sun Belt men’s basketball tournament.
Because they won the league and clinched the top seed, the Panthers (24-7) won’t begin play until Saturday’s semifinals. It seems as if Hunter couldn’t have planned it any better back to when the team began practicing in September.
“People asked me before if we are peaking,” Hunter said after the team defeated Western Kentucky in the regular-season finale. “We are playing our best basketball, we really are.”
Not only are they peaking, but they are healthy. Leading scorer R.J. Hunter, who suffered an ankle injury in the regular-season finale, is good to go. Important sub Markus Crider, who was held out of the game because of an ankle injury, also is available.
They will be needed because the team’s only path to the NCAAs will come from the automatic berth that comes from winning the Sun Belt tournament. It is extremely unlikely that the Panthers will have an RPI high enough to receive consideration as an at-large team should they lose in The Big Easy. ESPN’s RPI formula has Georgia State at No. 79 as of Friday. Only one team, New Mexico in 1999, has received an at-large berth with an RPI in the 70s.
So the Panthers will need to be at their best to guarantee a spot as one of the NCAA’s 68 teams.
Hunter has the unfortunate experience of knowing what happens when a team isn’t at its best in the conference tournament.
When Hunter’s IUPUI team won the Summit League in 2009-10, he said it peaked in February and did its best to hold on at the end. It couldn’t, losing in the conference tournament and failing to make the NCAAs.
Which is why Hunter was happy to see Georgia State continue to improve throughout the season, even if it seems hard to measure for a team that was 17-1 in the conference.
Hunter credits Western Kentucky, the tournament’s No. 2 seed and a possible opponent in the championship game, with pushing the Panthers throughout the season. Despite winning 21 of their past 22 games, Georgia State didn’t clinch the Sun Belt’s regular-season title until March 1.
The only blemish came at Troy on Feb. 15. But the Panthers kept their lead because later that day, a struggling South Alabama team knocked off Western Kentucky. Hunter said the team listened to that game on their ride home.
“It was a different team (after that),” Hunter said.
Hunter described the next day’s practice as unbelievable.
“We knew we had gotten away with one,” he said.
Since that loss, Georgia State’s season average in points barely decreased from 79.3 to 78.1, but its averaged points allowed decreased from 71.3 to 68.5. The 9.6-point difference is the most for Georgia State in conference play.
“I’ve got a really good team,” Hunter said. “We went 17-1 in the Sun Belt. I don’t care where you are, that’s good.”
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