Georgia State University’s men’s basketball program opens its 2026-2027 season today at 6 p.m. at home against Bowling Green under new leadership, and the name on the sideline may be familiar: Jon Cremins. Jon is the nephew of legendary Georgia Tech head coach Bobby Cremins, the 1990 Naismith Coach of the Year who led the Yellow Jackets, behind Kenny Anderson and Dennis Scott, to the Final Four. Now in his first head coaching job, Jon is looking to replicate his uncle’s success and turn Georgia State into a winning program. He won’t have to look far for guidance, since the elder Cremins, who is also his godfather, has already visited the Panthers’ locker room and plans to be a regular in the stands.
“He’s a special mentor and person in my life,” Jon said. “He’s my uncle, he’s my godfather, he’s a coach. He’s been someone that’s super invaluable to me. We talk all the time, and he’s just been an unbelievable mentor for myself. He’ll be at a lot of games this year for us.”
For Jon, taking over the Panthers is also a homecoming, and it’s one he describes as almost surreal. “Every day I go home and I see the skyline,” he said. “I’m back in Atlanta. It just feels absolutely incredible, and I just love being back in this incredible city and state.”
Jon also inherits a program with a history of legendary coaches. Hall of Famer Charles “Lefty” Driesell, who also coached at James Madison before arriving in Atlanta, put Georgia State on the national map in 2001, when the 11-seed Panthers finished 29-5 and upset 6-seed Wisconsin 50-49 in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. They then advanced to the second round, where their run ended against none other than Driesell’s former team, Maryland, in a 79-60 loss.
Georgia State’s best season came in 2015 under head coach Ron Hunter, when the Panthers advanced to the third round of the Big Dance after R.J. Hunter, Ron’s son, hit a buzzer-beating three-pointer to beat the 3-seed Baylor Bears. Jon pointed to those Hunter-era teams as the standard for a program trying to get back to the championship level, because they could win on both ends of the floor. “Coach Hunter and his teams did that,” he said. “They were really good on offense, and they were really good on defense.” The Panthers haven’t had a winning season since 2021-2022, when they went 18-11, and Jon was just as clear that getting back to that level will take patience. “I told our guys the other day, Rome wasn’t built in a day, right?” he said. “We’re getting better every single day. And I think all the championship teams, every single one, have that resiliency in their DNA, and that’s what we’re continuing to press upon here.”
He stressed that rebuilding the program starts with recruiting the best talent that fits the culture. With Georgia State signing 14 brand-new players this offseason, Jon leaned heavily on the transfer portal and on his relationships around Metro Atlanta and throughout the state. “We had to sign 14 brand-new players, and without these current rules, to be honest with you, I don’t know how we would have done it,” he said. He believes few places in the country can match the talent in his home state. “When you go to a high school basketball game in the state of Georgia, there could be five, six, seven, eight Division I players on the court,” Jon said. “That’s just rare. There aren’t many other states in the country that can offer that.”
Two newcomers Jon wants fans to watch on Monday night are Jacob Meyer and Jacolb Fredson-Cole, a forward who transferred from McNeese and goes by “J. Cole” around the team. Jon described Meyer, who had a strong outing in the Panthers’ exhibition against Georgia, as a dynamic player who’s great in ball screens and in transition, and who can score as well as make the players around him better. Before landing Fredson-Cole, Jon called Duke Miles, whom he coached at Vanderbilt last season, for a scouting report and got a glowing review. “He said he’s the best teammate and person he’s ever played with,” Jon said. “He gets better every single day and plays with high energy. And they’re both lefties, so that’s a unique little tidbit about both of them.”
What matters most to Jon is that every student-athlete who comes into the program is what he calls a “five-star person.” “People who are about the right things, handle themselves with class, can be resilient, overcome adversity, and want to be the best version of themselves on and off the court,” he said. To find them, Jon and his staff look for prospects they already have a connection with, whether they coached them before or one of their former players played alongside them, and they build the roster through that network. That approach doesn’t change in the NIL era. Jon embraces NIL and says fundraising now takes up the majority of his job, but he insists his players are still “18- to 22-year-olds” who want to compete, earn a degree, and keep getting better, the same way they did before NIL existed.
On the court, Jon wants a team that’s tough defensively, limits opponents to one shot, and crashes the glass, then shares the ball, gets paint touches, and plays in transition on offense. “When you step into our arena, whether you’re a fan or the opposing team, you leave there saying, ‘Wow, that team was connected. That team played hard. That team played the right way,’” he said. The Panthers already got a lesson in that process when Georgia’s press forced a string of early turnovers in the exhibition, and Jon said his team responded with some of its best practices of the preseason. “A loss is not going to define who we are,” he said. “We’re going to learn from that, build on it, and continue to get better and better. We’re process oriented. We’re not just results based.”
He also mentioned that his ties to Valdosta State and Georgia Southern let him recruit the South Georgia area as well. “I love South Georgia,” Jon said. “I have great ties down there, and there are a lot of really high-level basketball players from that area as well.” Jon was an assistant coach at Georgia Southern for two seasons, and he helped guide the Eagles to 20 or more wins in both campaigns. Coaching on the other side of the GSU-GSU rivalry now is exciting for him, especially after one of his new players noticed a familiar face on the locker room wall. “One of the players was like, ‘Hey, Coach, I think that’s your picture up on our wall in the locker room,’ and I was coaching on the other side,” Jon said with a laugh. “Some of the best atmospheres I’ve ever coached in were in our rivalry, State versus Southern.”
Jon has had successful stints at both James Madison and, most recently from 2024 to 2026, Vanderbilt, where the Commodores went 27-9 overall and 11-7 in conference play last season, and he credits much of that success to the same portal strategy he’s using now. “We’ve had great success at Vanderbilt and James Madison in the portal,” he said. “It’s part of the reason why I’m the head coach of Georgia State.”
Despite all the success Jon has had in his coaching career so far, what gives him the most joy is getting to do it in front of his family and friends, many of whom are flying and driving in for tonight’s opener. “I told my guys this: no one gets to where they are alone, right?” he said. “I had a lot of people help me get to this spot who have been along for my whole entire journey. I can’t wait to see all those faces in the crowd.”
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