Men’s Basketball Earns ‘Signature Win’ Against Georgia State

With 10 seconds remaining in overtime and a three-point deficit, the Texas State men’s basketball team’s first option — a 3-pointer for Ethan Montalvo, junior guard — was snuffed out by Georgia State.

The Bobcats turned to their second option instead.

Emani Gant, junior forward, caught the ball at the top of the 3-point arc and unfurled a shot off the backboard for his first career 3-pointer, sending the game into a second overtime period.

Texas State, double-digit underdogs heading into the matchup, closed the second overtime with a 77-74 win over the reigning regular season conference champions, snapping Georgia State’s 18-game winning streak at home.

With the victory, the Bobcats matched last season’s win total in 12 games.

“I’m very proud of our players,” Coach Danny Kaspar said. “This is a signature win for us. To beat Georgia State on the road is a big feather in our cap.”

Kaspar singled out Gant, Montalvo, D.J. Brown, senior guard, Cameron Naylor, junior forward, and Kavin Gilder-Tilbury, sophomore forward, as crucial cogs in the Bobcats’ victory. Each player finished in double figures, accounting for 70 of the team’s 77 points.

Texas State closed a three-game road trip, with a pair of wins over Troy and Georgia State, the preseason favorite to win the Sun Belt Conference.

The Bobcats are outscoring opponents by 8.3 points per game this season, after being outscored by an average of 4.6 points last season.

The team lost both meetings against the Panthers by a combined 38 points. Defeating Georgia State is a tangible reason that the Bobcats are moving the needle in the right direction.

“I’m counting on this victory to convince our players that if we play the right way we can beat anybody in our league on any given night,” Kaspar said.

Quixem Ramirez is a sports editor for the University Star where this story originally published. It is reprinted here through a news partnership between the University Star and the San Marcos Corridor News