If colleges picked their football teams based on the eyeball test, it’s unlikely that Antavious Lane would have gotten a second glance. At 5-foot-9 and 180 pounds, he’s hardly an intimidating figure.
But Georgia State coach Shawn Elliott doesn’t pay that much attention to the stature of a recruit. He didn’t care about Lane’s physical measurements. When Elliott looked at recruiting film, he saw a football player.
And he was right. Lane, a junior safety, continues to play at the level that earned him All-Sun Belt honors the past two seasons. Last week he had seven more tackles, moving into fifth place on the school’s career list with 219, and one interception, which tied teammate Quavian White for the career lead with 11.
“I’m a firm believer that you’ve got to find football players,” Elliott said. “You go find football players, and they will make your team so much better. I’ve dealt with the offensive line for a lot of years, and everybody says, ‘Oh, he’s got to be 6-5 and 300 pounds.’ I look for the animals. I look for the guys who play with great effort.
“You go and search, and (Lane) is a ballplayer. I don’t know why – and I think Florida Atlantic was the only other school recruiting him – but I just lit up when I saw him. I said, ‘That’s an unbelievable football player. I want him.’”
Lane’s nickname is “Hit Stick,” a tag he put on himself during his sophomore season at Dwyer High School in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. It describes the sort of hard-hitting, effort-based approach that Lane brings to every game.
“I was watching my highlight film after my sophomore year, and I’m thinking, ‘I’ve got a lot of big hits on here,’” Lane said. “That made me name my tape ‘Hit Stick Part I’ and I changed my Instagram name, and when I got to college everybody just called me ‘Hit Stick.’”
Lane leads the team with 80 tackles this season, with two tackles for loss, two forced fumbles, one breakup and two interceptions.
Lane and his defensive teammates will be challenged this week to slow James Madison (6-3, 4-2 Sun Belt), which leads the Sun Belt Conference with 35.3 points per game. Georgia State (4-6, 3-3) needs to win its final two games to become bowl eligible. The game will start at 2 p.m. and can be seen on ESPN-Plus and heard locally on WRAS-FM 88.5.
James Madison is one of four new teams that joined the Sun Belt this season. The Dukes are in their first season as an FBS team and were picked by the coaches in the preseason poll to finish last in the East Division. Instead they became the second team to go from FCS to the national rankings.
“When the preseason rankings came out, and they’re getting picked at the bottom of the conference, I said you guys have no idea about the caliber of play at the FCS level,” Elliott said. “They’re a talented football team. Some of the players on their roster are some of the best I’ve seen on film … and we’ve played South Carolina, North Carolina, we’ve faced these conference guys, and they’ve got some of the best we’ve seen.”
And while James Madison gets most of its attention on offense, the Dukes rank first in the conference against the run and third in total defense. Georgia State is the league’s top running team, averaging 241.9 yards, but played last week behind a patchwork offensive line that has been beset by injuries. GSU ran for 186 yards last week, but that broke a streak of five consecutive weeks with at least 200 yards.
Starting right tackle Travis Glover and left guard Luis Cristobal both were out with injuries. GSU moved Bryson Broadway from left tackle to left guard and brought in Mason Cook and Johnathan Bass to start at tackle. Center Malik Sumter and right guard Pat Bartlett were the only linemen in their regular place.
“It doesn’t look so good when you have to mix and match it. It just doesn’t quite fit as well,” Elliott said. “We didn’t have a whole lot of time to prepare those guys. … Four days, and you go out and play. The guys who were in there played as hard as they could. They just didn’t have enough experience in certain areas to be really successful.
“But I won’t blame them for their effort or intensity. It’s just the way the game of football works. Sometimes you have injuries that are unfortunate. We were just a little short-handed.”
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