The Red Wolves will return home to a frozen Jonesboro bearing a game that’s nearly as chilly. The four-game road-trip yielded but one win – an 85-68 thumping of Georgia Southern – and three losses – an overtime defeat to South Alabama, a soul-crushing destroying to Troy and a one point loss to Georgia State, a team that earned one OOC victory on the season.

More than halfway through the season, it’s difficult to take a measure of these Red Wolves, led by a rookie head coach and rostered by a group of players who had never played with one another heading into the season. One had to expect growing pains. But there seem to be detrimental common denominators to these games: egregious turnovers, missed layups, hot starts squandered and adjustments left unmade.

The latest lost to the Panthers is a good example. Up early by 15 points, Georgia State made kept calm and made their adjustments, moving the ball around the perimeter and picking A-State apart with mostly-open threes. The Red Wolves responded by crashing the glass, but failed to do much with those boards. Arkansas State out-rebounded the Panthers 38 to 21, but its twelve offensive rebounds delivered just 10 second chance points. Not helping matters: Red Wolves committed twice as many turnovers, 14 to just seven for Georgia State. The Red Wolves would fall 82-81.

Thanks to the conference’s universal mediocrity, Arkansas State remains a conference contender even after its 1-3 road trip. But if you’re a Red Wolves fan, you are likely troubled by A-State’s lack of progress in mitigating turnovers and its inability to hold leads. You are probably aghast to see a team like Georgia State, so comically dysfunctional for the first half of the season, to have righted itself enough to overtake A-State in the standings. Where is the killer instinct?

Arkansas State has yet to mature as a team. It’s hit a ceiling made evident in the program’s last home game, a sloppy one point victory over Texas State. There’s still a great deal of basketball to be played, but thoughts of enjoying a championship season are rapidly fading.

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