This is starting to get fun for everyone.
The Georgia State men’s basketball team is putting on a show, making a fast 5-0 start in the Sun Belt Conference as well as going on the second-longest winning streak in school history.
This past weekend, the men’s team racked on two more victories to extend the current winning streak to nine consecutive in two polar opposite games.
“It’s really important, if you’re going to win a championship, to win at home,” Hunter said.
Thursday night, the Panthers blew a 15-point lead to Arkansas State, but R.J. Hunter was able to make a game-winning jump shot with 12 seconds left in the game to claim the 73-72 victory.
Saturday’s game against Arkansas-Little Rock, on the other hand, was an absolute blowout, winning 99-73. The Panthers started the game on an 11-0 run and scored 59 points in the first half, the most in the first half this season.
Head coach Ron Hunter feels the team has not come close to peaking yet, following Saturday’s win.
“I can’t see the ceiling,” Hunter said when comparing this year’s team to the team he said in his first season at Georgia State who went on an 11-game winning streak, the longest in school history.
“In my first year, I knew when it was done,” Hunter said about when his first team at Georgia State peaked. “We beat VCU when I thought, ‘You know what, that’s the best we can do’…but we had a whole two months to go after that.”
Hunter said that his team’s growth over the span of the streak has been his players’ ability to finish games.
Hunter said finishing began a focus after the [devastating] overtime loss the Panthers suffered Dec. 7 as Hunter said that was a game his team just did not finish. That was the last game Georgia State lost.
“Everything now is about finishing. We even said today we want to finish the season,” Hunter said as the March tournaments get closer every day.
Hunter said maturity is something he has seen from this team from the beginning making them a fun group of guys to coach.
“They play for each other, they move the ball, they share the ball, [and] we work some things out,” Hunter said.
Before the weekend’s games, students, alumni and fans were turning to Twitter to show their excitement of the upcoming games using the hashtag #PackTheArena.
The GSU Sports Arena was certainly packed Thursday night, garnering a crowd of 2,089, the largest home crowd this season.
“I looked up at that student section and in my mind was, ‘This is why I came to Georgia State,'” Hunter said. “I looked up there and there were no seats up in those rafters…this is what I wanted to build.”
The crowd for Saturday’s game was not as full because of the holiday weekend, but was about average compared to the other games this season coming in at 1,859.
The Panthers go back on the road to face two Louisiana teams who sit near the middle of the conference standings.
The first game is against Louisiana-Lafayette, who sits third in the conference, Jan. 23. Then a quick turnaround as the Panthers play Louisiana-Monroe Jan. 25, who is fifth in the conference.
