Former Mercer players return to honor Jibri Bryan

The calls and texts came in the early evening from Macon, but they covered time zones from coast to coast and across the Atlantic Ocean.

A teammate who had battled, fought, led and lifted was dead.

Avenues of communication were different, but the reaction the same.

Bud Thomas got the call from Daniel Coursey.

"He couldn't really get the words out," Thomas said. "I knew something was wrong. I'm trying figure out what in the world happened. Obviously, we knew it was not good but hoping it wasn't anything of this magnitude."

The magnitude was the shooting death of Jibri Bryan, a Mercer basketball player who was part of an iconic spring when that team grabbed attention in town and in the nation.

Bryan had arrived at Mercer with the nucleus of that team. Langston Hall, Monty Brown, Coursey and Thomas came and went in four years, while Darious Moten needed a fifth year.

Injuries had Bryan in a Bears uniform for a sixth season, this season. The work ethic and refusal to give in throughout his injury-plagued career strengthened Bryan's bond with those longstanding teammates.

Upon news of his death, regardless the circumstances, mobilization was immediate. Former teammates playing professional basketball in Europe, like Hall, began making travel plans. And other former teammates through the nation did the same.

By Mercer's tipoff Saturday afternoon, the Bears' first game since Bryan's death on Tuesday, a stunning reunion was in full force. Thomas, who along with Hall and Coursey roomed with Bryan their first two years at Mercer, was the first to arrive. By the time Mercer's women played Thursday night, Thomas was joined by Brown from Florida and former teammate Jake Gollon, an assistant basketball coach in South Carolina.

They were joined soon enough by others, like T.J. Hallice, as well as former Mercer players who didn't play with Bryan. They all shared a bond that has developed at Mercer under head coach Bob Hoffman. Its strength was evident again Saturday.

"It's special to see everybody literally didn't even think twice about coming back here," Thomas said. "It was basically a, 'What time is everybody getting in?' type of thing rather than who's going to make it, who's not."

Hall went to practice after getting the news, but he broke down.

"At first, when they were asking me if I was coming back, I was like, 'I'm not sure, I don't know yet,' " Hall said. "When I got to the gym and just broke down, that's when I talked to my coach and GM and told them I needed to go home for a little bit."

The vast majority players who were part of that attention-getting Duke-beating Mercer team in 2013-14 were again in Hawkins Arena on Saturday, with a few more to arrive Saturday night and Sunday. And most are staying at Hoffman's house. The lights were on late Friday into Saturday.

Anthony White Jr., who had transferred to Mercer, said he and Bryan and a few others were on a group chat Tuesday.

"We were in a group chat because we planned on going on a cruise," White said. "He had replied. Me and Kev (Kevin Canevari) were acting silly in the group chat, and he had replied."

That was at 12:25 p.m. on Tuesday, about four hours before Bryan was shot. A group of the players looked at that chat again during the late night.

"We haven't said anything in it," White said. "When we got to the bottom of it, he was the last one to reply. It got quiet. It got quiet quick."

Those who watched the Mercer team that magical season saw the dividends of a bond that was stronger than average. White said that made him pick Mercer.

"It's pretty much the main reason," he said. "To see it coming to fruition now, all of us are here right now when we need each other. It just shows that my choice wasn't wrong. And that much judge of character wasn't wrong, either."

As the former teammates lean on each other, they remember a teammate who might have been on the quiet side but exuded strength and will. Knee injuries kept interrupting Bryan's career, frustrating his teammates perhaps more than him.

Thomas recalled the Bears getting a win over Niagara in Bryan's second season. Bryan went down with another knee injury in the game.

"We knew Jibri was down, and the locker room after the game was just silence," Thomas said. "We were all just hurt, crying. Went to see him in the training room, and he was crying.

"It was just like, how strong he was and how he overcame everything and for this to happen again to him, it was devastating for all of us to see him like that."

Brown works in finance in Florida and just so happened to have business last week in Atlanta, so he made a side trip to Macon, a fortuitous if not eerie trip.

"I had just been at that Flash Foods to get a coffee this past weekend," Brown said.

As it was, he visited with Bryan on Friday and Saturday, and little of the talk with the father of a 2-year-old was about basketball.

"I was basically correlating it into telling him, 'I'm proud of what you're doing, you're putting yourself in a position to succeed,' " Brown said. "He looked at me and said, 'I just want to be near my son and I want to help him be successful.'

"He'll get there."

Canevari remained at Mercer in the athletics department since graduation, and he remembers his early impression of Bryan.

"He had that competitive nature about him. I think that was something hat bonded all of us. But Jibri definitely brought that as a role to the team."

This story was originally published February 6, 2016 at 10:10 PM with the headline "Former Mercer players return to honor Jibri Bryan ."