Mercer Men’s Basketball Eyes Eighth-Straight With at ETSU

JOHNSON CITY, Tenn. (MERCER RELEASE) – The Mercer men’s basketball team opens a three-game road stretch looking for its eighth-straight victory on Friday night at East Tennessee State. Game time at the ETSU/MSHA Athletic Center is scheduled for 7 p.m.

Originally scheduled for Thursday, Friday night’s game between the Bucs and Bears was postponed 24 hours after a winter storm system moved through the southeast. After Friday night, Mercer will continue the weekend road set at USC Upstate on Sunday afternoon.

Mercer (17-5, 8-1 A-Sun) hasn’t lost since Jan. 1 and looks to maintain its position atop the A-Sun leaderboard on Friday. The Bears are 8-1 in conference play for the first time in program history and one game ahead of Florida Gulf Coast on the conference ledger.

SCOUTING ETSU

ETSU has won two-straight games and nine of its last 10 home games. The Buccaneers are 11-10 (4-4 A-Sun) on the year, including a 9-3 record in Johnson City.

The Buccaneers return three starters from last year’s team that finished 10-22 (8-10 A-Sun). The team was picked to finish sixth among A-Sun competition in a preseason poll of league coaches. Currently, the Bucs are tied with USC Upstate for fourth place in the A-Sun standings.

A balanced scoring attack has five ETSU players averaging double figure scoring, led by junior guard Rashawn Rembert’s 15.3 points per game average. Rembert scores the majority of his points beyond the arc, where he’s shooting 43.8% (57-of-130) on the season.

ETSU averages 74.5 points per game, third most among A-Sun teams. The Bucs are also among the A-Sun’s best in free throw percentage (2nd – 71.9%) and 3-point field goal percentage (3rd – 35.8%).

Head coach Murray Bartow is in this 11th season with ETSU and captured his 200th win at the school last time out. Bartow has led ETSU to the NCAA tournament three times in his 11 seasons.

FAST FACTS

Jakob Gollon was named to the COSIDA Academic All-American District IV first team for the second-straight year on Thursday. As a member of the District first team, Gollon now advances to the ballot for first, second and third-team Academic All-American honors.

Mercer’s win over Stetson established the third season in a row that head coach Bob Hoffman and company have had a winning streak of at least seven games in conference play.

Mercer has had at least a 15-point lead in seven of its nine conference games this year. Mercer has led by 20 at some point in each of the last five games.

Mercer is off to its best conference start in program history. The program record for conference wins in a season is 14, done twice by the 2002-03 and 2012-13 editions of the team.

Langston Hall dished nine assists last time out and ranks 4th in A-Sun history with 564 career helpers. He’s only 49 short of tying the A-Sun record of 613 set by Napoleon Byrdsong of Centenary (1979-83).

Head coach Bob Hoffman is 41-12 after December 31 in the last three seasons.