Georgia State’s basketball season, which at one point was pegged as ending in the NCAA men’s tournament, instead ended with a soft thud in the NIT on Tuesday.
Two days after an excruciating overtime loss in the finals of the Sun Belt tournament, the Panthers wrapped up the year with a 78-66 loss to Clemson.
Unlike the tough emotions after Sunday’s loss, coach Ron Hunter and the players seemed proud after Tuesday’s game. Not proud to lose, but proud of what they accomplished this year.
“We all walked into thing together about 2 1/2-3 years ago,” he said, pointing to Devonta White and Manny Atkins, who played their final college games. “We said we wanted to win championships and change the culture. I’m forever indebted to them.”
White and Atkins were key factors in this year’s school-record 14-game winning streak, as well as the regular-season title in the Sun Belt. Rashaad Richardson and Denny Burguillos, contributors off the bench, also used up their eligibility.
The team finished 25-9, the second-most wins in program history.
“It’s a tough feeling,” said White, who has played on two of the five Georgia State teams to advance to postseason tournaments. “We came up short. I can live with that because we played as hard as we could. At the end of I’ll be OK with that.”
Atkins, who transferred from Virginia Tech to Georgia State three years ago, said the team did its best despite the fatigue of the short turnaround from Sunday.
“We kept the game as close as possible and tried to win it,” Atkins said. “I’m proud of these guys. Let’s keep it going and next year hopefully get a championship for us.”
Georgia State couldn’t find success against Clemson’s (21-12) defense, which was the fourth-stingiest in Division I this season (58 points per game). And the Panthers couldn’t stop K.J. McDaniels, who finished with 30 points and 14 rebounds. McDaneils, the ACC’s defensive player of the year, limited R.J. Hunter to 4-of-16 shooting. Hunter finished with 15 points.
“He’s a good player,” Ron Hunter said of McDaniels. “I’ll be shocked if they aren’t in the finals of the NIT.”
Hunter said because of the shot turn-around they didn’t have a lot of time to prepare for McDaniels or to put in a game plan. They walked through some things Tuesday afternoon, but Hunter didn’t do much because he was trying to save his players’ legs.
It appeared as if Georgia State was poised to advance after grabbing a 23-20 lead early in the first half. But Clemson went on an 11-0 run to open a 31-23 lead.
Georgia State fought back and cut the margin to 35-32 on an Atkins’ 3-pointer just before the half.
Still, there were things to worry about.
McDaniels matched his per-game average with 17 points, six coming on 3-pointers, in the first half as Clemson had no trouble creating shooting holes in Georgia State’s zone defenses.
“We did a good job against all those zones,” Clemson coach Brad Brownell said. “It disrupts you but we had a pretty efficient game.”
Georgia State grabbed a 40-39 lead less than four minutes into the second half on a steal and dunk by R.J. Hunter.
Clemson regained the lead on a dunk by McDaniels followed by a three-point play by Jordan Roper to give the Tigers a 48-43 lead.
But Georgia State kept hanging around.
Clemson pushed the lead back to five on a hook shot by Landry Nnoko with 8:27 left.
Ryan Harrow split Clemson’s defense on the ensuing play and seemed to have a layup before Nnoko blocked it, one of several in the second half. Atkins tried to stop the ensuing breakaway and was whistled for a blocking foul near midcourt.
Ron Hunter, unhappy with the officials, protested too much and was hit with a technical foul with 7:54 left. It was the first technical against this Hunter this year. He said he was clapping his hands to indicate to the officials that he though Nnoko had pinned the ball against the glass, which is goal-tending. He said the official thought he was trying to embarrass him.
“It’s like the other night, one play here, one play there,” Hunter said.
McDaniels made one of the free throws for the technical, and DaMarcus Harrison made both free throws for the foul by Atkins to push Clemson’s lead to 57-49.
McDaniels added two more free throws as Clemson’s lead grew to 10 with 7:02 left.
Georgia State’s hopes of rallying were extinguished by 3-pointers from Roper and Harrison, the last with 2:43 left as Clemson increased its lead to 72-59.
“We lost to a very good basketball team but I thought we fought them, I thought we played hard,”Ron Hunter said.
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