Georgia
Eagles lose a heartbreaker in triple OT to Georgia State
STATESBORO, Ga. (WTOC) – Just ten days prior to Georgia Southern’s matchup against Georgia State on Saturday, the Eagles picked up their first Sun Belt win in Atlanta against the Panthers. However, the script was flipped the second time around, as Georgia State pulled out an 88-83 win in triple overtime.
After trailing 22-11 after the first quarter, the Eagles came back to make it a 5-point game at the half. Georgia Southern led by three with under a minute left in regulation, but Georgia State hit a three-pointer to send it to the first overtime period.
In overtime, the Eagles trailed by four with 15 seconds left on the clock, but this time it was Southern with a clutch shot — Paris Gaines made a three-pointer to bring the Eagles within one. She followed it up by making one of two free throws to send it to double OT.
In double overtime, Shanti Simmons made a layup with 5 seconds remaining to tie the game at 76 and push it to triple OT. In that final period, Georgia Southern had possession trailing by one with under a minute to play, but the Panthers got a steal, extended their lead, and went on to get the win 88-83.
Simmons led the way for the Eagles with 22 points. Mckenna Eddings followed not far behind with 20, while Gaines made some clutch baskets in extra time.
“This was a tough one,” said head coach Hana Haden. “I think that this will probably be a tough one for everyone to get over — you’re that close. I think for us, something that we’ve been talking about for a lot of the year is trying to play for 40 minutes, and now tonight, we had to play for 55 minutes, and I think if you clean up some things in the first 40 minutes, then maybe it doesn’t have to come to that. It’s really tough whenever you fight as hard as our group did.”
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Kirk Fordice-like Rick Jackson is sounding a whole lot like Daniel Kirkwood Fordice as he tries to be elected Georgia’s next governor.
Fordice came out of nowhere — actually, Vicksburg is somewhere but you know what I mean — in 1991 to become a two-term Mississippi governor.
He had money but nothing like Jackson, a billionaire businessman who’s also trying to emerge from nowhere politically to win Georgia’s top office.
“The establishment hated Trump, because they couldn’t control him. They are going to hate me,” Jackson says in an ad for Georgia’s Republican Primary on May 19, sounding like one of my favorite Mississippi governors — Fordice, because of his unpredictable personality (he could vilify or charm you, all in one sentence), not his politics. He died in 2004 of cancer.
I stood by a cafe entrance one morning, waiting to cover a Fordice speech. When he appeared, I stuck out my hand to shake his. “I’m not shaking your damn hand. You’re part of the problem down there (referring to the newspaper),” he told me, smiling and moving on.
Jackson rose to become one of economic giant-Georgia’s wealthiest people. He came from Atlanta’s rough midtown area, ending up in the foster care system. He left college due to poor financial circumstances.
The 71-year-old Jackson wormed his way into the dynamic city’s business scene in the late 1970s, mostly of the healthcare variety with mixed success before starting a workforce staffing and services company and later an antibiotics manufacturing plant. He turned those businesses into billion-dollar enterprises.
“It’s God’s money,” he said in rural Blakely, and he’s been charitable with it.
Jackson doesn’t try to hide his vast wealth. His family lives in a 48,000-square-foot mansion at Cumming, a place of nearly 100,000 people near Atlanta in Forsyth County, which once promoted its almost all-white population as a virtue.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution columnist Bill Torpy recently wrote that Jackson will spend a ton of his own money in seeking another mansion, the one occupied by Georgia’s governor. Torpy noted that present Lt. Gov. Burt Jones was once heavily favored to win the primary race, but he’s fallen behind Jackson’s bold money bid.
“The one-time front-runner in the Republican primary (Jones) has been relegated to No. 2, the result of a $100 million Mack truck running him over.
Rick Jackson, a billionaire healthcare tycoon, a man with a sly smile and reptilian gaze, is the guy driving that truck,” Torpy wrote.
The GOP field includes Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger, who spurned Trump’s demand to find 11,780 votes that would’ve allowed him to win Georgia in 2020.
Fordice was effective with some bombastic rhetoric during his run for governor, but I don’t remember it reaching the histrionic level employed by Jackson. In a major ad blitz, often referencing (Georgia college student) Laken Riley’s murderer, Jackson promises that unauthorized immigrants committing violent crimes will be “deported or departed … any questions?”
In another ad, Jackson growled, “Like President Trump, I don’t owe anybody anything, and like you, I’m sick of career politicians.”
Fordice spent only $1 million to get himself elected Mississippi’s governor. He somewhat sneaked up on the establishment, riding no escalator to the first floor of his Vicksburg concrete river mats-contracting office to declare his intentions. Who could ever forget his announcement seeking the governorship that ran on page 5 of the Clarion Ledger?
Recent polling ahead of Georgia’s May primaries for governor shows the eventual Republican nominee faces a strong Democrat in the November general election, most likely former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms. That’ll require another whole pot of money.
— Mac Gordon, a native of McComb, is a retired Mississippi newspaperman. He can be reached at macmarygordon@gmail.com.
Gulfstream recently announced a $5 million investment in Georgia education, welcoming students and leaders to its Savannah headquarters.
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