Men’s basketball finished this past week with a 93-84 loss on the road in Chattanooga, Tenn., taking on the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga for a conference game. With the loss, the Bears are now 11-12 on the season and 4-6 in Southern Conference play, good for eighth in the conference, and the team splits the regular season series with their SoCon foe.
Mercer scored 48 points in the first half and 36 points in the second half and the largest lead of the game for the Bears was a 12-point margin late in the first half. Ahmad Robinson ‘25, Tyler Johnson '25 and Brady Shoulders ‘28 were, once again this season, the scoring leaders for Mercer. Guard Robinson scored 19 points with six assists, Johnson scored 17 points and grabbed seven rebounds while Shoulders tallied 14 points with five rebounds. Marcus Overstreet '27 recorded his second-straight game with double-digit rebounds, leading the team with 11 against Chattanooga.
The team grabbed 42 boards, shot 46.2 percent from the field and 44 percent from the 3-point line. The team struggled from the charity stripe, though, converting 13 free throws of 25 attempts. The team can hang their hats on the rest of their offense overall, though, as it scored 84 points on a Mocs defense giving up 74 points to conference opponents this year. Of those 84, six were scored off turnovers, nine were fast break points and 36 total points came in the paint.
The game will sting for the Bears not because they lost to a bad opponent, but because they held the lead for roughly 33 minutes in the game. Earlier this season, Mercer overcame a 23-point deficit to hand the University of North Carolina-Greensboro its first home loss of the season, but in the final 6:30 on Saturday, the Mocs completed their own rally to topple the Bears. At one point late in the first half, Mercer led by as much as 12 points, but Chattanooga's offense heated up in the second half while Mercer's cooled off.
The next game for the Bears will be another road conference game against Samford University. The Bulldogs are No. 1 in the conference with a 8-2 SoCon record and an overall record of 18-5. The Bulldogs have only lost one home game this season, and the Bears are looking to make it two losses. The game will be in Birmingham, Ala., where Mercer has a 27-27 all-time record against the Bulldogs.
