Georgia State’s football team has a problem with momentum.
The Panthers can’t get it quickly enough. When they finally do, they lose it too quickly. And then they can’t get it back again.
The Panthers (1-4) hope to reverse the trend, which has fueled their four-game losing streak, when it visits South Carolina State on Saturday. Making it more difficult will be that quarterback Drew Little, who started last week’s game, won’t be able to play this week because he didn’t recover sufficiently enough from injuries sustained in last week’s loss to Murray State. Bo Schlechter, who started the season’s first three games, will start, and Kelton Hill will back him up.
“I think when you take the momentum and you have it, it’s a mark of maturity when you don’t let it go,” coach Bill Curry said. “What you learn when you become a really competent football player, you learn to play one play and then the next play and the next play without referencing the score, without referencing what the defense or offense is doing in front of you. You just keep playing until somebody blows the whistle and says the game is over.”
The Panthers have been outscored by 39 points in the first half of games this season, but the third quarters have been closer. The Panthers have been outscored by only six points in the third, but the failure to finish shows itself in the fourth-quarter numbers.
In the final quarter of games, Georgia State has been outscored 47-7.
It’s hard to win if you can’t get off to a good start and you don’t finish well. Curry said it has nothing to do with conditioning. It’s a function of discipline.
“I attribute it to a lack of poise and a lack of connection and urgency,” Curry said. “The start and finish are two of the most important times, and that’s where we’ve been the poorest.”
An example of the mental effect of momentum occurred in Saturday’s 48-24 loss to the Racers, a game that the Panthers seem to have in their grasp for a few short minutes.
After a poor start, the Panthers rallied and took a 10-7 lead. The Racers responded with a touchdown to take a 14-10 lead. And then came a sequence of plays that shows the fine line the Panthers are walking this year when it comes to success and failure.
Murray State scored on an 8-yard run to take a 21-10. Schlechter, in for an injured Drew Little, overthrew a wide-open receiver running down the middle of the field on what would have been an momentum-reversing touchdown.
Schlechter followed by shanking a punt on fourth down, giving the Racers a short field. They ran a simple screen that the defense badly misplayed, resulting in a 46-yard touchdown pass. In one quarter, a possible 21-17 close game turned into a 28-10 deficit, too much for the Panthers to overcome.
“That’s 14 points; that’s an incredible morale factor,” Curry said. “So you go into the half and work the half. And then we come back and we lose our edge again. We have to keep working through those experiences and build on them until we can play the whole game. If you ask me if it would have been this difficult to teach these lessons I would have laughed. But it’s reality, so we can’t act like it’s not there.”
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