Mercer leaning on strong leadership

Quarterback John Russ talked Monday about his Mercer team's fighting spirit, pointing to a bracelet he was wearing with the words expressing the Bears' theme for the rest of the season.

Keep fighting.

That's what the Bears (2-3) hope to do Saturday as they try to snap a three-game losing streak when they host East Tennessee State. The game is a non-conference game with the Buccaneers (0-5) joining the Southern Conference next year.

"It's so frustrating because we have outgained every team we have played," Russ said of the losing streak. "If you look at the stat sheet, we should have won every game we've played and should be 5-0. The only stat we haven't won is the scoreboard the past three weeks. That's so difficult to think about, but what we have been preaching is keep fighting and keep working and keep trying to win games in the SoCon."

The statistics back up Russ' thoughts on the losing streak. Mercer outgained Tennessee Tech 416 to 357, Wofford 464 to 434 and Western Carolina 404 to 338, but the Bears have lost those games: by seven to Tennessee Tech, by one to Wofford and by three to Western Carolina.

The losses to the Terriers and Catamounts left the Bears at 0-2 in the Southern Conference.

"As a coach, you come back, and you can't wind down, and you can't sleep," Mercer head coach Bobby Lamb said of last week's loss to the Catamounts. "You basically go over every single call you made, every single play and the decisions you made. At the end of the day, it comes down to the same thing it always comes down to, a play here or a play there or a group of plays. It's just frustrating that you put so much time and energy into it and couldn't come up with a win for the second week in a row.

"Everybody's heartbroken, everybody's upset, everybody wants to win. But you have to move on to the next one."

The Bears have gotten used to dealing with close losses, and Lamb credits the team's leadership for handling that in a positive way. Mercer suffered four of its conference losses last year by single digits.

"I hear people say all the time that it's worse to lose a close one like that, but if you get blown out, you've got way more problems," Lamb said. "If it's close, at least you're in the football game, and at least you can make just a few adjustments the next week. But if you get blown out, you may have to make a whole lot more changes.

"It does get old, but as a coaching staff, you've got to come in and say, 'Hey, the way we react, our players are going to react.' So you have to get over it and move on to the next one, and our players have done a great job with that."

This story was originally published October 15, 2015 at 10:23 PM with the headline "Mercer leaning on strong leadership ."