Mercer seniors go out in style
Close calls have been the theme of the careers of the 30 Mercer seniors.
And they endured another one Saturday at Five Star Stadium.
But the Bears’ seniors went out in style with a 27-24 win over Furman, wrapping up a 6-5 season, including 4-4 in the Southern Conference in the program’s third conference season.
Furman, which started the season with six losses, finishes at 3-8 overall and 3-5 in conference play.
In a wild final quarter, Mercer took the lead on a 32-yard field goal from Cole Fisher with 7:58 left only to see Furman respond with a Reese Hannon 36-yard touchdown pass to Richard Hayes III on fourth down with 1:25 to play.
But the Bears weren’t done, and they drove right back down the field. Facing fourth-and-10, senior quarterback John Russ hit senior wide receiver Jordan Marshall with a 38-yard touchdown pass with only 31 seconds left. Furman got one final chance, but Kam Lott ended the game with an interception in the end zone, and the Bears then ran out the clock with one snap.
Five who mattered
Russ: The Bears’ quarterback completed 14-of-30 passes for 191 yards and rushed 21 times for 119 yards. He had two touchdown passes and one touchdown run.
Fisher: The sophomore made two field goals in the windy conditions at Five Star Stadium. Before the 32-yarder in the fourth quarter, Fisher nailed a 46-yarder for a 10-6 Mercer lead in the second quarter.
Marshall: The senior wide receiver had only one catch, but he made it count with the game-winner. It was also his only touchdown of the season.
LeMarkus Bailey and Tyler Ward: Bailey, a junior, led Mercer with nine tackles, while Ward, a senior, added seven.
Observations
Senior leaders: Saturday’s game marked the only Southern Conference game this season that featured two senior starting quarterbacks facing off. Hannon led Furman in rushing with 41 yards and completed 23-of-34 passes for 251 yards. Both quarterbacks threw two interceptions and two touchdowns.
Another close one: Maybe the Bears and Paladins should just get used to close games. Furman won 25-20 at Mercer in 2014 in the Bears’ Southern Conference debut. Last year in Greenville, South Carolina, Mercer won 27-20 in overtime.
Worth mentioning
Nice round number: Russ’ 1-yard touchdown run in the third quarter was the 30th of his career.
Wrap it up: Mercer’s 30 seniors wrapped up their third winning season. The Bears were 10-2 in 2013, 6-6 in 2014 (1-6 in the Southern Conference) and 5-6 in 2015 (2-5 in the conference). Those seniors played in 23 games in their careers decided by one score, and they finished 12-11 in those games.
They said it
Lamb on the emotions of the final game for the seniors: “There’s a lot of emotions running through this game. All week, we talked to our seniors about, ‘OK, this is it. There are 30 of you, and you’re going to play your last game.’ But we tried to dumb it down a little bit in the last couple of days just because kids get too hyped a lot of times, and they want to do the best that they can possibly do on their way out. And I was really worried about it going into the game.”
Lamb on the seniors: “It’s a special class, and we said it all week long. We signed 104 in year one and 31 in year two, so 135 players that could have stayed the course, and 30 of them stayed the course. That shows you how special these young men are.”
Lamb on the fourth Southern Conference win of the season: “That’s probably the biggest thing. Obviously, you want to try to six wins and go 6-5, but to get to 4-4 in the league, and you’re going to look at your four losses, you’re losing to four teams that are going to be playing next week (in the FCS playoffs), and then you lose to an ACC team in Georgia Tech. We’ve got a good football team, as I told this team all year long.”
Russ on Marshall, Rush’s roommate, catching the game-winner: “I can’t even put it into words how excited and how happy I am for him. He’s been my roommate ever since I came here. You’ll never see a guy work as hard as he will in practice, weight room and everything. He has nicks, injuries. He has bad knees. It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t complain. He does his job, whatever they ask of him.”
Marshall on catching the game-winner: “Just a loss for words. It seems like something that would happen in a movie. I knew it when they went up 24-20, something in my gut just told me that we were still going to win that game.”
Marshall, still on the game-winner: “All I saw was orange. I don’t even remember anybody hitting me; the only thing I remember is catching the ball and I just ended up in the end zone.”
This story was originally published November 19, 2016 at 6:32 PM with the headline "Mercer seniors go out in style."