It didn’t take much recruiting to sell Jonas Hayes on the notion of becoming Georgia State’s basketball coach.
From the moment Georgia State athletic director Charlie Cobb made initial contact, Hayes was excited about the opportunity to come home to Atlanta, coach with his twin brother and elevate the program to the next level.
“I knew about the way Charlie Cobb expressed his interest in me about this job, I knew it was a great fit,” Hayes said. “Just his vision of wanting to elevate the program that has been extremely successful here in the recent past.”
Georgia State is coming off an 18-11 season that saw the Panthers win the Sun Belt Conference tournament and earn the school’s fifth trip to the NCAA Tournament.
Hayes, 40, emerged as one of the game’s rising stars in the postseason. He took over as interim coach at Xavier when coach Travis Steele was fired in March and led the Musketeers to four consecutive victories and the NIT championship.
He pursued the head coaching job at the University of Georgia -- where he played and coached -- but finished runner-up to Mike White. That left Hayes as Georgia State’s No. 1 target after Rob Lanier left the bench to take the head coaching job at SMU.
Cobb called Hayes to set up a phone call the day before Xavier played in the NIT finale. After putting off the conversation so Hayes could give his full attention to the NIT championship game, the two got together and Hayes came away excited to have a job that appears to be in his wheelhouse.
“You couple the connection that I have and that my staff will have in this region, to the resources and the support that is already given from an administrative standpoint, and I think that’s a marriage,” Hayes said. “That’s a perfect fit, so it got me excited.”
Hayes said his brother, Jarvis, who joined the GSU staff in 2019, will remain as an assistant. They grew up in Atlanta and attended Douglass High School, only a few miles from the GSU campus. They were involved as coaches on the AAU scene and continue to have deep roots in the city.
“It’s home for me,” Hayes said. “There’s no adjustment period. This is Georgia State University. I grew up a stone’s throw from this campus, so there was a zero-adjustment period for me. It was an opportunity to hit the ground running, and it was a dream come true.”
Hayes is working through the existing roster to see who’s going to stay and who’s going to leave. He will lean on the transfer portal to entice Atlanta players to come home and will try to keep more of the homegrown talent from leaving the area.
“I don’t like to use the term ‘put a fence around Atlanta.’ That’s giving the illusion that you’re keeping somebody where they don’t want to be,” Hayes said. “We’re going to put our arms around the city, we’re going to put our arm around the state. We’re going to love on these guys and give them the opportunity to play in front of their families with a staff that’s going to be committed to their total development -- social development, emotional development, academic development and athletic development.”
And he’s personally excited about a chance to work with his twin.
“He knows me, I know him,” Hayes said. “He trusts me, I trust him. He loves me, I love him. And the synergies are unbelievable. Like my dad always said, ‘We’re going tease, we’re going to joke, we may drink a few Cokes.’ But when it comes down to us winning games, we are unbelievably fierce competitors. We love to win, and when you have somebody that’s aligned with you that closely on your staff, I think you can unlock the secret sauce to sustainable success.”
About the Author
