Georgia State coach Ron Hunter was in no mood to celebrate his team’s 81-72 win over Troy on Thursday in the Panthers’ Sun Belt Conference opener at the GSU Sports Arena.
“That was the worst we’ve played since the Florida International game,” he said. “I’m not happy at all. If we didn’t have a game on Saturday, we would be back here at midnight.”
Hunter didn’t like his team’s energy, its leadership, its effort on defense or its communication. He implied that his players didn’t work hard during the Christmas break, which contributed to the poor performance. Hunter said there’s no such thing as a bad win, but “we came close today.”
R.J. Hunter scored a game-high 25 points with a career-high seven steals, and Ryan Harrow scored 20 with seven assists as the Panthers (8-6, 1-0) won their fifth consecutive game. They will play at South Alabama on Saturday.
Though Georgia State didn’t play consistently tough defense, it was good enough in spurts to force a season-high 23 turnovers that it turned into 33 points. The Panthers needed most of them because the smaller Trojans out-rebounded them 36-22.
Georgia State grabbed a 16-point lead, the largest of the game to that point, on a layup by Hunter early in the second half.
But Troy wasn’t going roll out the Sun Belt welcome mat that easily. The Trojans used 7-3 run, capped by a three-point play by Tevin Calhoun, to cut the Panthers’ lead to 10 with 14:03 left.
Georgia State pushed its lead to 15 on two Harrow free throws, a Hunter jumper and a steal and free throw by Jaylen Hinton with 12:20 left. After a Troy basket, Hinton added another steal and layup to keep the lead at 14.
Troy cut the margin back to nine, 60-51, on baskets by Hunter Williams and Kevin Thomas with less than 11 minutes remaining.
The Panthers put the game out of reach after consecutive dunks by Curtis Washington and Harrow gave their team a 73-59 lead with 5:50 left.
Hunter said he thinks the Panthers will play better Saturday because he can control everything they do, saying he will go so far as to put them in bed at 9:15 p.m. if he has to.
“If you want to be average, you accept games like tonight,” Hunter said. “If you want to be good, you don’t accept games like this.”
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