Box Score JONESBORO, ARK. – Georgia State and Arkansas State combined for 111 points and 1,192 yards of offense, but it was a late touchdown by the Red Wolves that gave the home team a 59-52 win over the Panthers in an ESPN Thursday night game at Centennial Bank Stadium.
 
Redshirt-freshman quarterback Cornelious Brown IV passed for 314 yards and three touchdowns, all to sophomore Sam Pinckney, and rushed for 83 yards and two more scores for the Panthers. His five touchdowns responsible for tied the GSU record.
 
Pinckney finished with six catches for a career-high 146 yards, and his three touchdown catches are one shy of the school record. It was the second-straight 100-yard game for Pinckney, who has caught five TDs in the last two games.
 
With GSU playing without the Sun Belt's leading rusher Destin Coates and top wide receiver Cornelius McCoy, junior Tucker Gregg stepped up with 14 rushes for 142 yards, breaking the century mark for the first time in his career on his 21st birthday.
 
"Sam and Tucker were workhorses tonight," head coach Shawn Elliott said. "The great thing about us offensively is that we spread the ball around to a number of people. If one guy goes down, we feel like we have another guy right there who can step up.
 
The Panthers (1-2, 0-2 Sun Belt) rushed for 269 yards as part of their 583 total yards of offense.
 
"It's a disappointing loss," Elliott said. "The effort is there. We played our hearts out against a good Arkansas State team and came up short. We're dealing with situations we have no control over, and you have to roll with the punches. Tonight we were short a few players and a coach (defensive coordinator Nate Fuqua) and came out on the short end of things."
 
Arkansas State (3-2, 1-1) was led by the quarterback combo of Layne Hatcher and Logan Bonner. Hatcher finished 21-of-28 for 332 yards and four touchdowns, while Bonner went 18-of-28 for 197 yards and three TD passes.
 
The Red Wolves scored the winning touchdown on a trick play, with Rashauud Paul hitting Lincoln Pare for a 22-yard touchdown pass on a reverse with 4:23 to play.
 
The Panthers drove to the Arkansas State 41, but Brown's fourth-down pass was just out of Pinckney's reach down the right sideline with two minutes left.
 
Jonathan Adams led the Red Wolves' receivers with 15 catches for 177 yards and two TD catches, while Dahu Green added nine catches for 172 yards and a pair of scores.
 
Arkansas State took an early 7-0 lead just over two minutes into the game on a 3-yard pass from Logan Bonner to Tyler Reed, set up by a fumbled snap on a GSU punt.
 
The Panthers used a school-record 99-yard drive to the game 7-7 with 4:34 in the first quarter. After taking over on the 1-yard line, Gregg burst free for a 56-yard run, and Brown capped the drive with a spectacular 35-yard run on which he dove for the pylon and the touchdown.
 
After an Arkansas State touchdown, Georgia State tied the game early in the second quarter as defensive end Jordan Strachan stripped Bonner and Blake Carroll scooped up the fumble and returned it 74 yards for a touchdown. It was the first fumble returned for a touchdown since Chandon Sullivan returned one against Georgia Southern in 2017. It was the second-longest fumble recovered for a touchdown in program history, only trailing Robert Ferguson's 88-yard return against ULM in 2013.
 
Bonner once again gave Arkansas State the lead with a 42-yard touchdown pass to Jonathan Adams with six minutes to play in the half, Brown answered with an 11-yard touchdown run just 90 seconds later, knotting the game at 21 with four minutes to play in the first half.
 
Hatcher found Green again for a 20-yard touchdown completion with 48 seconds remaining in the half to go ahead 28-21. However, the Panthers had enough time answer remaining as Brown found Pinckney on a 21-yard scoring pass to send the teams into the locker room tied at 28-all.
 
Pinckney gave the Panthers their first lead of the game just 90 seconds into the second half on a 36-yard competition from Brown, set up by a fourth-down stop by the GSU defense.
 
The Red Wolves scored touchdowns on consecutive possessions to take a 42-35 lead, but Gregg's 7-yard touchdown run tied the game at 42-42 with 4:44 to play in the third quarter.
 
After Blake Grupe kicked a 39-yard field goal to give Arkansas State a 45-42 lead, Pinckney caught his third touchdown catch of the game six seconds into the fourth quarter, a 31-yard completion from Brown, to give GSU a 49-45 lead.
 
Hatcher found Jonathan Adams on a 32-yard completion as the Red Wolves went back ahead 52-49 with 12:40 to play.
 
Following a 29-yard field goal by Noel Ruiz tied the game at 52-52, Arkansas State took the lead for good on Paul's touchdown pass to Pare.
 
Georgia State faces its second straight road test next Saturday, Oct. 24 at Troy in a 4 p.m. ET contest that will be nationally televised on ESPNU.