(STATS) – Mercer always seems to be everyone’s dangerous team to watch, but the Bears’ first four seasons in the Southern Conference came with a lot of respect and perhaps too many near-misses against the stronger opponents.
The highlight was a late-season win over Chattanooga in 2015, which handed the SoCon co-champ its only conference loss. There also was middle-of-the road play, reflected by 6-6, 5-6, 6-5 and 5-6 records.
One of the differences with Mercer’s 30-24 road win over No. 9 Samford on Saturday is it came in the conference opener, so the STATS FCS Team of the Week now find itself squarely in the early title mix.
And armed with perhaps its strongest team.
“We needed a signature week against to get over the hump,” coach Bobby Lamb said. “I can’t say enough about what our guys did today. We were ahead at halftime; we’ve been losing games like this in the third, fourth quarter. They came out, they stayed together. We had a little adversity in the third quarter, but, my gosh, we held on and won a big one on the road, beat the No. 9 team in the country.”
Samford was the preseason favorite in the SoCon. In ending an eight-game losing streak to the Bulldogs, Mercer (2-1, 1-0) controlled the clock for nearly 35½ minutes of possession, including two scoring drives over seven minutes each. That kept the Samford’s quick-strike offense and All-America quarterback Devlin Hodges on the sideline as much as possible.
The other quarterback story might have had the more interesting one in the matchup as redshirt freshman Robert Riddle accounted for 316 passing yards and three total touchdowns. Lamb has made one of the gutsiest personnel decisions of the FCS season, not just handing the starting job back to Kaelan Riley, the 2017 SoCon freshman of the year. He instead rotated the young pair in the first two games before Riddle went the whole away against Samford.
Also in the upset, senior Tee Mitchell went over 100 yards rushing for the second straight game. Cole Fisher kicked three field goals, including a 41-yarder with 4:37 left, putting Mercer ahead 30-21 and basically putting away the signature victory.
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