Mercer searching for answers after slow conference start

Mercer split its first two home Southern Conference games this past week, but head coach Bob Hoffman was not satisfied with the Bears’ offense.

Mercer beat VMI on Thursday but shot 17.9 percent from 3-point range, hitting 5-of-28. On Saturday, the Bears had the high-flying East Tennessee State Buccaneers in just the kind of game they wanted, but Mercer couldn’t pull out the win because it struggled down the stretch on offense.

The Bears lost 67-58 after shooting just 38.9 percent (21-of-54) from the floor. After building a seven-point lead with less than eight minutes to play, Mercer was outscored by 16 points the rest of the way.

“Ria’n (Holland) was special, but we couldn’t get anybody else going in that stretch right there to close the game to have a chance to win the game,” Hoffman said of Holland, who led the Bears with 24 points but was the only player to reach double figures. “Those are the moments you’ve got to step into and be ready for. I didn’t find the right plays. I didn’t put them in the right situations.”

Mercer returns to action Wednesday at Samford. The Bears are 7-10 overall and 1-3 in conference play, and they have lost six of their past eight games.

“We’ve gotta get back to work and focus on the next game now, see what we did wrong this game and try to get better at it and fix it,” Holland said.

Samford is 12-5 overall and 3-1 in the conference in head coach Scott Padgett’s third season running the program. The Bulldogs are 6-2 at home.

“Coach Padgett’s done a great job,” Hoffman said. “They’ve had a great beginning to the year. I know they’ve played at a high level and won a lot of games against good teams on the road already in the preseason, so that’ll be a tough game for us Wednesday night in Birmingham.”

This story was originally published January 8, 2017 at 6:31 PM with the headline "Mercer searching for answers after slow conference start."