What You Need to Know:
* Georgia State earned an 81-74 victory over Wright State on Wednesday night as both head coaches (Ron Hunter and Scott Nagy) went barefoot to raise awareness for Samaritan's Feet.
* Senior Jeremy Hollowell led the Panthers with 22 points, making a career-high six 3-pointers.
* Junior Isaiah Williams finished with 19 points on 6-of-8 shooting in just 23 minutes for the Panthers.
ATLANTA-On a night when both head coaches went barefoot to raise awareness for Samaritan's Feet, Georgia State earned an 81-74 win over Wright State in the GSU Sports Arena. Senior Jeremy Hollowell knocked down a career-high six 3-pointers and finished with 22 points to lead the Panthers.
Georgia State head coach Ron Hunter, who was coaching barefoot for the 10th time, improved to 10-0 when coaching without shoes to raise awareness for the nearly 300 million children around the world who wake up each morning without shoes. Since becoming the first coach to go barefoot in 2008, Samaritan's Feet has raised nearly 10 million pairs of shoes.
Hollowell, who scored 20 or more for the third time this season, finished 8-of-14 from the floor and 6-of-11 from 3-point range.
Junior Isaiah Williams added 19 points on 6-of-8 shooting and 3-of-4 from 3-point range in just 23 minutes. He and Hollowell combined for nine of Georgia State's 11 3-pointers.
Georgia State (4-2) improved to 39-4 in the GSU Sports Arena since the start of the 2013-14 season. Wright State (6-2) dropped just its second game of the season as Raider head coach Scott Nagy also coached barefoot. He was among the first two follow in Hunter's footsteps will working as the head coach at South Dakota State.
Despite trailing by as many as 24 in the second half, Wright State cut the lead to as few as five with just over a minute to play as Grant Benzinger got hot for the Raiders, finishing with 32 points, going 9-of-18 from the floor and 6-of-12 from 3-point range. He also grabbed eight rebounds and shot 8-of-9 from the free throw line.
The win marked the 107th for Hunter at Georgia State, tying him with former head coach Bob Reinhart for the most in school history.
“That was a good win,” Hunter said. “My only disappointment is that we got a big lead and Wright State got back into it. With that said, Wright State is a very good program and Coach Nagy is going to do some really great things with them.”
Wright State opened the game red-hot from the floor, hitting 5-of-6 early. The Raiders took a 21-15 lead with 11:21 to play in the opening half, before both teams went through a cold stretch.
Georgia State missed 8-of-9, while Wright State missed 11-of-13, as neither team could pull away.
However, the Panthers used a 7-0 run, capped by a jumper from Jordan Session to take a 22-21 lead with 7:15 to play.
Wright State retook the lead 31-30, before Georgia State used an 8-0 run in the final minutes and then went into the locker room with 41-33 lead following a Hollowell 3-pointer at the buzzer.
The Panthers knocked down seven 3-pointers in the first 20 minutes, while shooting 48.4 percent from the floor.
Georgia State came out hot in the second half, using an 11-0 run to take a 59-35 lead with 13:01 to play, while the Raiders started the half missing 9-of-10 from the floor. The 24-point margin was the Panthers biggest of the night.
Wright State responded with an 8-0 run to cut the lead to 59-43 with 9:31 to play before a D'Marcus Simonds put-back stopped the streak. Simonds finished with five points and six rebounds.
It took the Raiders until the 2:25 mark of the second half to get the deficit back to single digits and shaved the margin to five with just over a minute to play before a jumper by Williams put the Panthers back up by seven.
Sophomore Malik Benlevi added eight points for Georgia State, while senior Justin Seymour scored seven and sophomore Jeff Thomas added six.
Georgia State will return to the road to face Mississippi State on Sunday at 5 p.m. ET live on SEC Network+. It will mark the second SEC school the Panthers will face this season.
