Georgia State vs. Charlotte

Georgia State returns home to host undefeated Charlotte (2-0) in a Saturday night game at Center Parc Stadium (7 p.m. on ESPN+).

The Panthers (0-2) look to regroup after a tough start to the season against Army and 22nd-ranked North Carolina.

“We just played a talented North Carolina team, and for two-and-a-half quarters, we fought and we scrapped and we clawed to try to hang in there,” head coach Shawn Elliott said. “About six or seven minutes left in that third quarter, it was still a two-possession ballgame, but then it got away from us. So there were some positives, but obviously no one in our football program is feeling good about where we are.

“But we still play 12 games, and we're going to continue to push and fight.”

Charlotte, coached by Will Healy, is 2-0, including a win over ACC foe Duke.

“We've got a very good Charlotte team coming in here,” Elliott said. “They're 2-0, and they've got confidence. It will be a tough test for us.”

Georgia State and Charlotte have met twice before, and the series is tied at 1-1, with each team winning on the other’s home field. Last year’s scheduled game at Charlotte was not played due to the pandemic. The teams are also scheduled to meet in 2022 at Georgia State and in 2023 at Charlotte.

Georgia State won the last meeting 28-0 at Charlotte on Sept. 23, 2017 in the first and only shutout recorded by the Panthers. Left guard Shamarious Gilmore and NG Dontae Wilson are the only current Panthers who played in that game. Charlotte won the first meeting 23-20 in the 2015 season opener at the Georgia Dome.

Georgia State and Charlotte have a common thread in former player Mark Hogan, who was a member of the inaugural team at both schools.

Hogan enrolled at Georgia State in January 2009 as the program’s first scholarship player. His father, Mark Hogan Sr., had played football at Georgia Tech for coach Bill Curry, who went on to become Georgia State’s inaugural head coach. The younger Hogan spent the spring of 2009 as the Panthers’ first--and only--player until the rest of the class enrolled in the fall of 2009. An outside linebacker, Hogan started GSU’s inaugural game on Sept. 2, 2010, a 41-7 win over Shorter.

After playing three years of football and two seasons of baseball and earning his degree from Georgia State, Hogan moved to Charlotte as a graduate transfer. Not only did he start Charlotte’s inaugural game in 2013, but he scored the 49ers’ first touchdown on a pick six.

Hogan is now an assistant coach at Davidson. Gilmore, the super senior left guard and the veteran of the Georgia State program, is set to play in and start his 50th game in a Panther uniform, breaking the school record held by several players. The fourtime All-Sun Belt lineman has logged over 3,400 snaps in his career.

Gilmore’s 50th game is scheduled with the same team against whom he made history in the 2017 meeting as the first and only Georgia State offensive lineman to score a touchdown. After a GSU field goal attempt was tipped, a Charlotte defender tried to field the ball in the end zone but fumbled, and Gilmore, then a redshirt freshman, recovered it for the score.