Mercer hoping to get over the hump in Southern Conference

Bobby Lamb continues to preach to his Mercer team that it's still in the Southern Conference race.

Even after tough losses to Wofford and Western Carolina, one by one point in overtime and the other by three points on the road. Even with the Bears winless in conference play nearing the end of October.

And you know what? Lamb is right.

Sure, Mercer is 0-2 and one of only two teams without a conference win so far -- the other is Saturday's opponent, VMI -- but outside of Chattanooga, the rest of the conference doesn't seem impossible to handle. That's not a slight, mind you. The conference is just that balanced this season.

Chattanooga, which won last year's conference title with an unblemished record, and The Citadel are 3-0, while Western Carolina is 2-1. Furman is 1-1, and then Wofford and Samford are 1-2. Either Mercer (0-2) or VMI (0-3) will earn its first conference win Saturday at Five Star Stadium.

And if it's the Bears, they have a chance to make a move in the second half of the season with The Citadel, Chattanooga, Furman and Samford rounding out their schedule.

"It's big because now you're stepping back in conference, and every game from here on out is a conference game," Lamb said. "It's like I told the team, we still control our own destiny. We've got a lot of games left and a lot of upper-echelon teams left to play, so we still control our own destiny. We can still do some damage in this league. There's a lot of crazy things that happen on a Saturday afternoon. You've just got to come play and be better than the other team for three hours."

Despite just one win in nine conference games since joining the Southern Conference last year, Mercer has been competitive in most of those games. Lamb's team just needs to get over the hump after so many close losses (six of the eight by single digits). Once it does, it could really take off.

That process definitely could begin during the second half of this season. Lamb pointed to last week's results to describe the balance of the conference.

"VMI had the lead at halftime, and Chattanooga came back to win the game like a true champion does," Lamb said. "You've got Citadel and Samford, one of them has 400 yards rushing (Citadel) and the other has 400 yards passing (Samford). The difference is Samford turned it over four times. Western and Wofford was a really close game, but Wofford turned it over five times.

"It comes down to the wire, and it comes down to execution in every game. That's what we're preaching to our players every day."

Contact Daniel Shirley at 744-4227 or dshirley@macon.com

This story was originally published October 23, 2015 at 2:22 PM with the headline "Mercer hoping to get over the hump in Southern Conference ."