Mercer women climb into top 10 of Mid-Major poll

Mercer’s women’s team appears to be playing its best basketball with a four-game winning streak, and the Bears continue to be noticed nationally.

The Bears (16-4, 5-1 Southern Conference) are ranked 10th in this week’s CollegeInsider.com Women’s Mid-Major Top 25. The Bears moved up two spots after wins over Furman and Wofford, and Mercer is the only Southern Conference team in the ranking.

The Bears wrap up a three-game homestand at 2 p.m. on Saturday against Samford. That game marks the halfway point of the conference season for the Bears.

“It’s kind of flown by. I think our players in November, they’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is so long,’ ” Mercer head coach Susie Gardner said. “But now that it’s almost February, we realize that it’s crunch time, and hopefully we’ll be playing our best basketball.”

Key home stretch

Mercer’s men’s basketball team has an important home stretch coming up, and that starts at 4:30 p.m. on Saturday against The Citadel.

That is followed by games with Western Carolina, Furman and Wofford. Mercer is 9-12 overall and 3-5 in the Southern Conference, while The Citadel is 9-13 and 2-7.

The Bulldogs lead the country in scoring.

“We’re grateful to be home,” Mercer head coach Bob Hoffman said. “Our guys have been working hard. It’s been a good week for us to be back in the building. We’ll have a couple of weeks here that we have multiple games. Saturday against Citadel, a tremendous scoring team, the best scoring team in the country, so we understand what they’re going to do to us. We’re going to have to be ready to go, and you’ve got to have a lot of energy in that game.”

Strong on, off the field

The Georgia College baseball and softball teams landed spots in College Factual’s 2017 Division II National Student-Athlete Rankings poll, released Jan. 20. College Factual’s yearly rankings weigh college programs’ student-athlete success on and off the field.

Coming off a 41-18 season and a 3.56 GPA, Georgia College’s softball team ranks 12th out of 261 programs. Georgia College’s baseball team is 30th out of 229 teams after a 33-17 record and a 2.91 GPA.

Georgia College’s baseball team faces Ohio on Feb. 3, while the softball team faces Albany State on Feb. 4.

On the road Thursday

The Fort Valley State basketball teams travel to Clark Atlanta on Thursday in SIAC play. The Fort Valley State men’s team is 8-10 overall and 6-3 in the SIAC, while the women’s team is 5-11 and 4-4.

Little bit of a break

The Middle Georgia State basketball teams don’t play again until Monday when they travel to Vorhees. The Middle Georgia State men’s team is 10-7 overall and 5-6 in the Southern States Athletics Conference, while the women are 5-12, 3-7.

On a roll

The Central Georgia Tech men’s basketball team has won eight straight games to improve to 13-4 overall and 4-0 in the GJCAA. The Central Georgia Tech women are also rolling at 11-9 overall and 3-1 in the conference. Both teams play Saturday at Albany Tech.

This story was originally published January 25, 2017 at 12:23 PM with the headline "Mercer women climb into top 10 of Mid-Major poll."