Mercer continues its growth in Southern Conference
One conference win in 2014. Two in 2015. And three this season with two games left to play.
Mercer head coach Bobby Lamb continues to see growth in his program in the Southern Conference. In their third year in the conference, the Bears reached three wins in a season for the first time with a 21-13 victory over East Tennessee State.
Mercer travels Saturday to Samford before returning home to Five Star Stadium on Nov. 19 to end the regular season against Furman.
“It’s important to keep building. You’ve got to continue to build this thing year-by-year,” Lamb said. “I tell people, we’ve basically started football twice here. We started non-scholarship football in the Pioneer League the first year, and then, ‘By the way, you guys are going to be scholarship.’ We’re sitting here with three scholarship classes that are signed, but we’ve got 30 seniors now that have meant a lot to this program.
“To have three wins in the Southern Conference and an opportunity to win No. 4 and No. 5 on the way out, it would be big. It would be big momentum going into recruiting season, as well.”
After going 10-2, including 6-2 in the non-scholarship Pioneer Football League, in their first season in 2013, the Bears moved to the Southern Conference. They finished 6-6 overall and 1-6 in the conference in 2014 and 5-6 overall and 2-5 in the conference in 2015.
Quarterback John Russ is one of those seniors, and he said the captains have talked about finishing their careers in strong fashion.
“We had a meeting after the Wofford game with the captains. This is a heavy senior team ... we’re not going to sit there and say, “Oh, screw it,’ ” Russ said. “No. We still have opportunities out there, and we want to finish strong. We have two games left, and we could make the playoffs; you never know what can happen. We just want to finish strong for our careers without playoffs even being in consideration. We want to win these next two games.”
Lamb said that would be a step in the right direction for the program even with the conference championship being decided by The Citadel’s win this past weekend. Mercer has lost to Samford the past two seasons, but if the Bears can get a win on the road Saturday, their season finale could have much more meaning than just a regular-season game.
The Southern Conference could get four teams into the expanded FCS playoffs this season, and two wins likely will put Mercer right in the mix for one of those spots.
“The only thing we control is what we can do. We have two games left,” Lamb said. “Like I told the team Sunday, we play these two football games, and then we put our hand out there. Whatever they decide, they decide. We have to go 1-0 this week to have that opportunity to win next week. We’re concentrating on Samford. We’ve got to go to Samford; tough road trip for us, but it is sandwiched between two home games, which is good. We’ve got to go on the road where Samford plays extremely well at home, and we have to find a way to get it done.”
This story was originally published November 7, 2016 at 5:19 PM with the headline "Mercer continues its growth in Southern Conference."