Mercer moving on from loss to Chattanooga

Blowout or down-to-the-wire loss.

It doesn’t really matter to Mercer head coach Bobby Lamb.

A loss is a loss, after all, and the Bears suffered a bad one Saturday to third-ranked Chattanooga in a 52-31 decision. The Mocs improved to 6-0 overall and 4-0 in the Southern Conference while the Bears dropped to 2-3 and 1-2.

“They’re both very difficult. Obviously, if you lose close, you’ve got a chance at the end, an opportunity at the end,” Lamb said. “We didn’t have a chance in this game. Certainly, our guys did a good job of flushing it (Sunday). We corrected mistakes. A lot of those mistakes were us not doing the right thing, but a lot of those mistakes were Chattanooga, as well.”

Junior running back Alex Lakes said it’s easier to get over a blowout loss, and the Bears are working to do just that. They stay in conference play at 4 p.m. on Saturday at Five Star Stadium when they host Western Carolina.

The Catamounts are 1-4 overall and 0-3 in conference play. Western Carolina beat Mercer 35-21 in 2014 and 24-21 last year.

“I think it’s easier to forget a big loss like that just because there were so many things that we didn’t do right as a team,” said Lakes, who had 52 yards rushing Saturday and has 263 this season. “As you look at a close loss, maybe one or two plays can decide the difference in the game. So a loss like we suffered on Saturday is easier to get over.

“We’ve put it to bed already, and we’ve already started to prepare for Western Carolina. I began watching film (Monday), so we’re just ready to get out there on Saturday and try to redeem ourselves and show that we’re a better team than we played on Saturday.”

To do that, the Bears will have to correct the mistakes they made against Chattanooga, which lost to Mercer last season. The Mocs rolled up 531 yards of offense on 78 plays and built a 38-3 halftime lead by scoring 31 straight points after a Mercer field goal made it a 7-3 game.

“Chattanooga’s very talented. It’s like I told them, they’ve got a lot of talent, but they had the same talent last year when we played down here in Five Star Stadium, and we won the football game,” Lamb said. “They just did it better this year and more aggressive than they did last year, and we didn’t play quite as well. We got exposed because we didn’t do the things we needed to do to be successful.”

This story was originally published October 10, 2016 at 3:03 PM with the headline "Mercer moving on from loss to Chattanooga."