Georgia State coach Jonas Hayes sat alone across the court while his basketball team scrimmaged. He watched quietly as assistant coaches Jarvis Hayes and Allen Payne worked their blue- and white-clad teams under a live clock and game conditions.
Afterward, Hayes, who is beginning his third season at the helm, echoed the feelings of the players in the sweat-covered uniforms when he said his guys are ready to play a real opponent.
“We probably reached that point 10 days ago, and that’s natural,” Hayes said. “So it’s almost like we’re pulling each other’s face off. Now we’re getting ready to try to see if we can pull someone else’s face off.”
The Panthers get their first chance for a face-off against some fresh competition Saturday when they host South Carolina-Beaufort in a 2 p.m. exhibition at the GSU Convocation Center. The season opener is Nov. 4 at home against Ball State in the Sun Belt-MAC Challenge.
“I want to see the guys that we play just play with some chemistry,” Hayes said. “We play a lot of five-on-five in practice, but it’s different when the lights are on, the popcorn is popping, and you’ve got people in the stands.”
With preseason workouts almost finished, Hayes likes what he sees. But he’s not satisfied. He is still mixing and matching in an attempt to identify the rotation. The experimentation is necessary because the Panthers have only one starter returning on the new-look team.
“The last three or four practices, we’ve tried to see what our team looked like in consecutive days, but we’ve changed blue and white (the colors the players wear in practice) 20 times in different segments,” Hayes said. “We’ll see what group works well together and try to get our rotation.”
There’s no question that returning senior Toneari Lane will play a large role. The 6-foot-5 Grayson High grad led the Sun Belt Conference with 2.8 3-pointers per game and 33.7% last season. He averaged 12.9 points. Lane was named to the preseason All-Sun Belt team. Now he’s taken on a larger role on the team.
“Toneari’s leadership is something that’s been shining through,” Hayes said. “Just holding people accountable, and he’s in the best shape of his life, both mentally and physically. He’s shooting the blood out of the ball in practice, but we all know that’s what he does.”
Hayes will have a new point guard this season, as two-year starter Dwon Odom transferred to Tulsa for his final season. That leaves newcomers Darnell Evans and Malachi Brown as the main contenders for the playing time.
Brown, a sophomore from Buford who transferred from Seton Hall, is a little bigger (6-1, 175) and more physical. Evans (6-0, 165), a senior transfer from Caldwell University, is quick and explosive.
“Malachi is a really, really heady ballplayer. He’s got a good body, and he can shoot it,” Hayes said. “Darnell is like a lightning bolt. And defensively he’s like one of those bugs you get on your windshield when you drive down I-75 in rural Georgia. You can’t get him off.”
Other key players are expected to include Malik Ferguson, a 6-4 guard who played well in limited opportunities last season. Transfers in the rotation will be Justin Archer (6-7 transfer from Radford), Cesare Edwards (6-10 transfer from Missouri State), Zarique Nutter (6-7 transfer from Northern Illinois), Jelani Hamilton (6-6 transfer from Iowa State) and Nick McMullen (6-8 transfer from North Carolina-Asheville). Clash Peters, a big-bodied 6-9 freshman from California, may also help inside as the Panthers made it an emphasis to field a larger team this season.
“Our 2-point field-goal percentage, shots in the paint, was abysmal last year,” Hayes said. “I loved the guys we had, but we had a lack of depth and a lack of size at the same time. So, our 2-point shooting and paint production was really bad, and I thought that was an area we needed to get better.”
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