Now that Georgia State qualified for the Sun Belt men's basketball tournament, it can continue to work on what has helped it win two of its past three games: transition offense.
“I think we are playing the same, but we are making shots,” coach Ron Hunter said. “I’ll be looking to see how we play offensively. Can we score? Have we gotten better at that?”
The Panthers (15-12, 8-10) will play at Louisiana-Lafayette (15-12, 11-7) on Thursday and at Louisiana-Monroe (17-12, 13-5) on Saturday. The conference tournament will be played March 10-13 at Lakefront Arena in New Orleans.
The Panthers, the defending conference tournament champs, earned a spot after Texas State’s loss to Texas-Arlington Tuesday. The Bobcats were the last team that could directly prevent the Panthers making it to New Orleans. Even if Texas State were to win its final two games and Georgia State were to lose its final two, the Panthers have the head-to-head tiebreaker by virtue of their season sweep of the Bobcats.
The Panthers were picked to finish second by the coaches in the preseason poll.
“We may be thought it would be a little bit easier than it really was,” leading scorer Jeremy Hollowell said about qualifying. “The success the past couple of years, we still have to go out and play. We are realizing that. We are trying to create our own identity and go into March and see what we can do.”
The Panthers’ seed in the eight-team event is still to be determined.
Hunter said he doesn’t care what seed the team earns. He does care about whether the Panthers can keep improving on offense, mostly by scoring in transition, to go with a defense that statistically is one of the best in Division I.
In a recent 83-70 win over Appalachian State, Georgia State finished with more fast-break points (8) than its opponent (5) for the first time this season in conference play, according to Hunter.
Compared with last season, Hunter said this season’s team is missing an average of 12 fast-break points per game because of turnovers, bad decisions or missed shots. That would explain why the Panthers’ scoring average of 65.2 points per game ranks among the lowest in Division I. Adding 12 points would move the Panthers into the top 100 of 346 Division I teams in scoring offense.
The Panthers must also win on the road, where they are 3-9 this season.
Not having the pressure of trying to qualify for the tournament may help. Thursday’s game will be a good test. The Cajuns destroyed the Panthers 87-54 at the GSU Sports Arena in January. It was the team’s worst loss since Hunter took over and snapped its 15-game home winning streak.
“These two games are still big,” he said. “We need to get two wins on the road.”
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