For the second time in three days, South Alabama let a double-digit, second-half lead get away, but made enough plays in the end to win.
The Jaguars bested Sun Belt Conference rival Georgia State 69-67 on Saturday at the Mitchell Center, their third straight victory. South Alabama (16-6, 7-3 Sun Belt) is now a half-game back of first-place Troy in the conference standings.
“We found a way,” South Alabama coach Richie Riley said. “The thing about conference play is when you get to this stage — of the back half especially, I say this all the time. One team wins, one team loses, one team goes up, one team goes down. We’re moving up in the standings. We won, and it was not our best stuff. We didn’t play very well.
“… But just proud of our guys. Like I said, we didn’t have our best stuff, but we found a way and we’ll take it and we’ll move on.”
South Alabama let a 12-point lead get away vs. Coastal Carolina on Thursday night, but scored the game’s final five points to win 53-48. On Saturday, the Jaguars led the entire second half, but still endured some tense moments late in the game.
South Alabama led 60-48 heading into the final nine minutes vs. Georgia State, but the Panthers (9-14, 6-5) stayed close behind a barrage of 15 3-pointers. After the Jaguars’ JJ Wheat made both ends of a 1-and-1 free-throw situation with 20.8 seconds to play, Georgia State’s Malachi Brown buried his seventh 3-pointer of the night to cut South Alabama’s advantage to 68-67 with 15.3 seconds left.
Wheat was fouled again at the 12.9 mark, but this time missed the front end of the 1-and-1. However, the senior guard stole the ball away moments later, and teammate Randy Brady was fouled with 5.2 seconds left.
Brady made his first free throw to go up by two but missed the second, and Georgia State got away a last-gasp 3-point attempt. However, South Alabama’s Adam Olsen got in the face of the Panthers’ Jelani Hamilton just enough that Hamilton’s shot clanked off the front of the iron at the buzzer.
“AO (Olsen) gave the perfect contest that we teach,” Riley said. “He jumped at his peak as high as he could, with two hands vertically, without leaning into foul and he got up there high enough to make it come off short.
“And without that contest, [Hamilton] makes it. … AO max-contested that perfectly and he made him miss, but it was online. I thought it might be going in, but thank goodness AO contested like that and we were able to get out of there.”
South Alabama shot 52% from the field and turned the ball over only five times on Saturday, but made only three 3-pointers and missed nine free throws.
Chaze Harris scored 15 points to lead the Jaguars, and also added six assists and four rebounds. Jayden Cooper fired in 11 points, while Olsen scored 10 and pulled down a season-best 11 rebounds.
“Yeah, it’s just a part of my game that I need to expand on,” said Olsen, the Jaguars’ second-leading scorer at 16.5 points per game. “You can’t just be a scorer, can’t just be a shooter. I have to do stuff on the other end. So I’m really working on my conditioning, being able to play the amount of minutes I do and affect the game in other ways, like getting rebounds.”
Brown led all scorers with 21 points — all on 3-pointers, and also had nine rebounds and four assists. Hamilton added 12 (with three 3-pointers), while Trey Scott scored 10.
Georgia State won the rebounding battle 37-33, including 16 on the offensive glass. South Alabama, however, outscored the Panthers 50-12 in the paint.
“That’s a lot — 50 in the paint,” Riley said. “That’s just pounding, pounding in the paint. We did a nice job of finishing plays. And only turned it over five times, so it helped us even out enough of the offensive rebounds, the 3s, and they only made six 2s, which is a good number.”
South Alabama now heads back on the road to face App State, which is also a half-game out of first. The Mountaineers are 15-9 overall and 8-4 in the Sun Belt, but trail the Jaguars by percentage points in the league standings.
Tip-off for South Alabama at App State is set for 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, with live-streaming via ESPN+.
