Bite back: Surging GSU Panthers earn first-ever win at the Siegel Center

Adam Stern
Executive Editor
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GAME STORY

As Troy Daniels slouched back in his chair in the media room around 10 p.m. Wednesday night following the Rams’ game against Georgia State, the Roanoke native sported a stitched-up cut under his eye and a scowling, dejected look on his face.

Daniels— just a few minutes removed from missing the shot every player dreams of: the three-point buzzer-beater to win by one— was asked by a reporter if he was confident that last shot he had taken was going in.

“Every time I shoot, I think it’s going in,” Daniels retorted quickly. “It was on the money; it just came up short.”

Within seconds of Daniels’ game-changing shot coming up short, Panther players began celebrating jovially about what was simultaneously their eleventh-straight win, their best win of the season— and perhaps their best win in school history.

So the celebration was understandable, then, because Georgia State was a team that had won 12 games total last season and was full of players that had “never won on their own … never won period; at the end of the day these guys have never won,” according to Panthers first-year head coach Ron Hunter.

Yet as the Panther players began celebrating their 55-53 triumph over VCU at a sold-out Siegel Center, they looked every bit the part of winners.

There was GSU senior guard Jihad Ali— a player who had been a part of the culture of losing for so long before this year that Hunter joked this was Ali’s 26^th year with the team— bumping chests with a teammate with so much intensity, it looked like they were celebrating an NCAA tournament win in March instead of a conference win in the early days of a new year.

Here were two other GSU players, arms wrapped around each other’s shoulder, literally skipping toward the locker-room after shaking hands with VCU, unabashedly jubilant that the Panthers had just won their first game in school history at the Siegel Center after starting out 0-6 in the building.

And, last but most certainly not least, there was first-year head coach Ron Hunter trailing his team after the two teams had shook hands, funky Turquoise jacket finally removed for the first time all game, with a grin wore so wide it stretched halfway back to Atlanta.

Their ascendency onto the scene of elite CAA teams had been doubted or, perhaps more accurately, derided. But after Georgia State’s win over VCU Wednesday night at the Siegel Center, the Panthers can be denied their due no more.

The loss was a humbling one for VCU and ended their eight game-winning streak. The team had come close to pulling a smash-and-grab win out of the affair, but in the end, their comeback was a case of too-little, too-late.

“I think our guys, for much of the game, we wanted to get it all back in one play, and basketball doesn’t work that way,” VCU head coach Shaka Smart said. “You have to go play-by-play-by-play and point-by-point-by-point; there are no seven-point plays, there are no five-point plays.”

The Rams learned that lesson dearly Wednesday night, but in a long season that’s second half is merely getting started, they have a lot of time to learn from it.

“We got ourselves in that position, we didn’t want to get ourselves in that position, but it is what it is,” Daniels said. “More time in the gym: that’s how I see it.”