There was no energy shortage for the Georgia State basketball team Saturday.
The Panthers played hard on defense, played smart on offense and were able to correct many of the issues that dogged them in Thursday’s loss at Southern Miss. The result was a 90-76 win over South Alabama in Mobile, one of the team’s more impressive conference wins in two seasons under coach Jonas Hayes.
“I thought it was the tale of two nights,” Hayes said. “We played with energy from the opening tip. I think our guys grew up again today.”
Georgia State (7-7, 2-1 Sun Belt) had six players score in double figures – Lucas Taylor with 22, Toneari Lane with 20, Leslie Nkereuwem with 13, Jay’Den Turner with 11 and Brenden Tucker and Dwon Odom with 10 apiece. Turner had 10 rebounds for his third consecutive double-double and fourth of the season.
“Our guys played unselfish basketball on the offensive end,” Hayes said. “And I really thought we competed with the energy, effort and determination on defense. We bended, but we didn’t break, and this is a quality, quality South Alabama team.”
South Alabama (8-7, 1-2) got 22 points from Turbo Jones and 19 points from Isiah Gaiter, who had scored 29 in his last game.
Georgia State has won three in a row against South Alabama and leads the all-time series 20-13.
Georgia State bounced back to shoot 10-for-21 (47.6%) on its 3-pointers, with Lane making six and Taylor adding three. The Panthers were 6-for-24 (25%) in the loss to Southern Miss on Thursday.
“We know that Toneari Lane is one of the best shooters we have, and Lucas is a scorer,” Hayes said. “We have guys who are going to make shots, but the question is whether we’ll have enough awareness to be able to defend with enough grit and enough conviction to get this thing done.”
The Panthers were able to hold their poise in a pair of key situations in the second half.
The first was a marathon stretch of nearly eight minutes without a stoppage of play for a timeout. Following three consecutive timeouts, the Panthers emerged with fresh legs and made two baskets to up their lead to eight points.
The other sequence came minutes later. Holding a six-point lead, Brenden Tucker fired a bounce pass through traffic to Lane, who made the basket and drew a foul. Although Lane missed the free throw, Jay’Den Turner grabbed the offensive rebound and found Lane, who knocked down the long 3-pointer to give GSU a 70-59 lead with 7:56 left. South Alabama never got closer than eight the rest of the afternoon.
“The thing I’m going to keep hammering our guys is our consistency and that attention to detail, consistency and effort,” Hayes said.
Georgia State led 42-40 at halftime. The Panthers began the game with an 11-2 start, only to have South Alabama catch them at 26-26 and go up by three points before Georgia came back to regain the momentum with a 9-1 run.
Georgia State returns for two games next week at the GSU Convocation Center, hosting Old Dominion on Thursday and Georgia Southern on Saturday.
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