The Georgia State men’s basketball team will play an important game Thursday when it travels to Louisiana-Lafayette.
Though neither coach wants to say the game carries any more importance than any another because it is just one of 20 in the conference, both Georgia State’s Ron Hunter and Louisiana-Lafayette’s Bob Marlin agree that it is a big game because of the team’s recent history.
“Lafayette-Georgia State is always a big game because both are good teams,” Hunter said.
The teams met three times last season. Georgia State (9-5, 2-1 Sun Belt) won the first when R.J. Hunter scored 29 points in the second half to lift the Panthers to a 77-70 win at Lafayette (9-5, 3-0). Manny Atkins beat the buzzer with a 3-pointer to cap a rally to defeat the Cajuns 80-77 at the GSU Sports Arena.
But it was the third game, in the final of the Sun Belt tournament, that left a bit of a scar on the Panthers. In that one, the Panthers led by 11 with less than six minutes remaining, only to lose 82-81 in overtime.
Knowing an emotional rematch was coming, it may have been why the Panthers, picked to win the Sun Belt in the preseason, played so poorly in a 77-74 loss in double overtime to Texas State on Monday.
Hunter said he tried to warn his team against looking ahead. The warnings weren’t heeded. The Panthers, notably R.J. Hunter, struggled mightily on offense. Hunter missed all 10 of his 3-point attempts, and the team never got in a rhythm on offense.
“Sometimes you have to be smacked in the head to wake you up a little bit,” Ron Hunter said.
The Panthers need a good bounce-back performance not to fall too far behind in their goal of securing one of the top two seeds in the Sun Belt tournament, which will again be played in New Orleans, the site of last year’s nightmare.
The Panthers led the Cajuns by 11 with less than six minutes play in the conference championship game. A trip to the NCAA tournament seemed secure.
Marlin knew before the tournament that his team could beat the Panthers because of the closeness of the previous games. But he acknowledged earlier this week that even he briefly thought that winning the tournament wasn’t meant to be after Ryan Harrow made a jumper to put Georgia State ahead 66-55 with 5:21 left.
“You have to keep playing,” Marlin said. “Sometimes you get the lead in a game like that with that emotion. Some teams think the other team won’t come back. We just came back on them in Atlanta, so not sure why they thought they wouldn’t.”
The Cajuns did.
Elfrid Payton made a 3-pointer to cut Georgia State’s lead to six with three minutes left. Markus Crider was whistled for a quick foul, and Bryant Mbamalu scored on a layup. The Panthers’ lead was down to a manageable four with 2:34 left. The Cajuns forced overtime on another layup by Mbamalu with one second left and pulled away in overtime.
Hunter said he watched a replay of the game and then destroyed the tape.
Harrow said it didn’t take him too long to get over the loss. Before being asked about it earlier this week, he said the only time he has thought about it came while watching the Cajuns lose to Creighton in the NCAA tournament.
So, like his coaches, Harrow said this game doesn’t carry any more motivation than any other.
“I don’t think too much about Lafayette,” he said. “I know they are a good team, with a good coach and good players, but they are no more important to me than Southern Miss, or the first preseason game. We are just trying to win all the games so we have a better chance of making it to the NCAA tournament.”
