Former Douglass High, UGA player Jonas Hayes announced as new Georgia State MBB coach

ATLANTA — Jonas Hayes is returning to coach basketball in the city of Atlanta.

Georgia State University announced the former Douglass High School graduate and University of Georgia basketball as the new head basketball coach Wednesday.

Hayes takes over for Rob Lanier who left Georgia State after the 2021-22 season to take the head coaching job at Southern Methodist.

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Hayes joins the Panthers after most recently being a part of the staff at Xavier University in Cincinnati.

Before that, Hayes worked as assistant coach at UGA under coach Mark Fox. There was talks that Hayes was under consideration for the Georgia head coaching job after Tom Crean was fired, but that job went to former Florida Gators head coach Mike White.

Hayes’ name came up again as a potential assistant to White when Xavier fired Travis Steele and then hired Thad Matta to replace him.

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Hayes has deep roots in the state of Georgia, having grown up in metro Atlanta and playing his high school basketball at Fredrick Douglass High School alongside his twin brother Jarvis.

Jarvis will be entering his second season as an assistant coach for Georgia State and stay on to be part of his brother’s staff this coming year.

The twins initially signed to play college basketball at Western Carolina where they played as freshmen in 1999. The next season, they both transferred to the University of Georgia where they played through 2004.

Jonas began his coaching career as an assistant coach at Morehouse University in Atlanta the following season and has held several assistant coaching positions.

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Georgia State said they will formally introduce Hayes as their new head coach during a news conference early next week.

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