East Tennessee State at Georgia State
November 6 at GSU Sports Arena in Atlanta, GA
If Tuesday was any indication, Jeff Thomas is about to have a fantastic senior season.
Thomas scored a career-high 26 points on 7-of-14 shooting, added four blocks and played his usual excellent defense in a 74-68 win.
GSU, coming off a Sun Belt championship and NCAA appearance, gave up a horrific 27 offensive rebounds, so that huge problem did not go away at least in game No. 1 of the new season. Also, Devin Mitchell didn't play for an unknown reason.
But reigning league player of the year D'Marcus Simonds shook off some early rust to score 21 points (4-of-8 from three) and Pittsburgh transfer Damon Wilson, playing in his first game as a Panther, grabbed a team-high 11 rebounds and hit the biggest shot of the night, corralling a missed Simonds' 3-pointer and hitting one of his own with 50 seconds to play that put the Panthers in front 72-68.
The visitors had pulled to within 69-68 on a dunk from Armus Mladen at the 1:37 mark.
ETSU, a 25-win team and Southern Conference runner-up a year ago, built a 56-52 lead with just under eight minutes to play. GSU followed with a 10-0 run - Thomas nailed an ahead-for-good three with 5 1/2 minutes to go.
Nice double-double for Malik Benlevi, who had 12 points and 10 rebounds, including several put backs when GSU was struggling to find offense.
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