Mercer Men’s Basketball to Face Texas Friday Night

MACON, Ga. (MERCER RELEASE) – The Mercer men’s basketball season gets underway on Friday night as the Bears get set to do battle with Texas at the Frank C. Erwin Center in Austin at 8 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.

COVERAGE

Friday night’s television broadcast will air on the Longhorn Sports Network with commentary by Paul Sunderland, Reid Gettys and Amanda Scarborough. Margaritas in Mercer Village has announced it will host a viewing party for the Mercer fans on Friday evening with a big screen showing all the action. Radio coverage can be heard live on New Country 96.5 FM with play-by-play provided by “The Voice of the Bears”, Rick Cameron.

SCOUTING THE LONGHORNS

Friday’s meeting is the second matchup between the Bears and Longhorns. In the previous meeting, Texas topped Mercer in the finals of the Longhorn Classic on December 29, 1984.

Texas returns two starters and six letterwinners from last year’s team that finished 16-18 (7-11 Big 12). The Longhorns were picked to finish eighth in a preseason poll of Big 12 coaches.

The Longhorns were 12-4 at home in 2012-13 and are 31-5 in home openers at the Frank Erwin Center. Head coach Rick Barnes has won 13 of his 15 season openers with Texas.

Barnes has brought the Longhorns to the NCAA tournament 14 times in his 15 seasons with the school. He’s Texas’ all-time winningest coach and has amassed 560 wins in a 27-year career.

All six of the Longhorns’ returning players saw action in at least 29 games last season. The six players accounted for 33.4% of the team’s scoring and 52.8% of the team’s rebounding a year ago.

Junior forward Jonathan Holmes is the team’s most experienced player with 63 career games under his belt. Last season, he led the team at 5.6 rebounds per game and reached double figure scoring totals eight times.

FAST FACTS

A victory on Friday would mark Bob Hoffman’s 500th win as a collegiate head coach and 100th win at Mercer. Hoffman posted 88 wins with the women at Southern Nazarene, 243 wins with the men at Oklahoma Baptist and 69 wins with the men at Texas Pan-American.

Mercer’s last two years marked the first time the team has posted back-to-back 20-win seasons in program history. The team was 27-12 in 2011-12 and 24-12 in 2012-13. Mercer’s 51 wins are the most over a two-year span in program history.

After Friday night, the Bears will have played their last three games in three of the college basketball’s largest 25 arenas. In the 2013 NIT, Mercer played at Tennessee’s Thompson-Boling Arena (Capacity 21,678) and at BYU’s Mariott Center (Capacity 20,900).

Mercer has posted 21 road wins in the last two seasons, the fourth highest total in the country. The only schools to have more than 21 road wins in the last two years are Robert Morris (24), Bucknell (23) and Middle Tennessee State (22).