Bears ready to move on

After another close loss, the Mercer Bears have to do something they have grown accustomed to the past two seasons: Move on.

The Bears dropped a 24-23 decision to The Citadel on Thursday and have lost to the Bulldogs three straight years by five total points. Mercer has lost 12 Southern Conference games in two seasons and one game this season, and nine of those have been decided by single digits.

“It’s just one game,” senior quarterback John Russ said after the loss Thursday. “At the end of the day, if The Citadel loses a game, and we win out, we get to a tiebreak or something like that, we’ll figure it out. You’ve just got to win every single game. Right now, the SoCon is still there because you don’t know what’s going to happen, and you can still make it to the playoffs. We’re trying to keep winning.”

The Bears return to action Saturday against Georgia Tech. In its fourth season of play, that game marks Mercer’s first against an FBS program.

“We wanted to go into that game 1-0, obviously,” senior linebacker Tyler Ward said. “It’s going to be a similar offense, but it’s going to be a lot faster and bigger than that. We’re going to go in, heads held high and give them all we’ve got.”

This story was originally published September 4, 2016 at 10:32 AM with the headline "Bears ready to move on."