Turnovers, shooting, and Isaiah Miller doom Mercer men in SoCon tournament finale
By Michael A. Lough
The Sports Report
centralgasports@gmail.com
The last time Mercer’s men were in a college basketball conference tournament championship game was seven years and a day earlier.
It was on the opponent’s home court, in fairly deep southwest Florida.
The Bears got a chance to celebrate a little before the horn in a 68-60 win over Florida Gulf Coast in the A-Sun finale on March 9, 2014.
This one had a similar score at a neutral site, but it ended differently.
Isaiah Miller went for 25 points in 36 minutes, and 12 rebounds, six assists and only three turnovers to lead UNC Greensboro to a 69-61 win over Mercer in the Southern Conference tournament championship in Asheville, N.C.
The 6-0 senior guard from Newton in Covington was the tournament MVP after scoring six points above his average on 10-of-20 shooting, but only 5 of 13 from the line and 0 for 1 on 3-pointers.
Keyshaun Langley, a 6-1 sophomore guard, added 15. No other Spartan had more than eight.
James Glisson III and Leon Ayers III topped Mercer with 16 points each, Felipe Haase adding 13 while grabbing 10 rebounds, Glisson a rebound from a double-double.
Ayers, Haase, and Neftali Alvarez made the all-tournament first team.
“He did a great job,” Mercer head coach Greg Gary said of Glisson in the postgame radio interview. “Probably should’ve thrown it in to him more, looking back at it.”
Senior Ross Cummings struggled to five points on 2-of-8 shooting, missing all three 3-pointers and trying only one free throw, finishing with 26 points on uncharacteristic 8-of-37 shooting. And Jeff Gary went scoreless in 23 minutes – only the second such time this year - on three misses, two from 3-point range.
UNCG didn’t convert much on Mercer’s 18 turnovers, scoring 11 points. The Spartans had eight fewer turnovers that Mercer turned into 10 points, and survived a brutal 50-percent night at the line (13 of 26, to 12 of 13 for Mercer).
“We made some silly mistakes at the end against (a) good (team),” Gary said. “You’ve got Isaiah Miller out there, who makes plays. Winning plays. We just needed to get more of ‘em.”
Mercer (18-11) will hope for a spot in the smaller National Invitation Tournament or College Basketball Invitational, which is also hosting a smaller field. The CollegeInsider.com Tournament canceled this year’s event last month.
UNCG improved to 21-8. The Spartans won the 2018 tournament and lsot 68-64 to Gonzaga in the first round, and went to the NIT a year later. They finished 23-9 last year, losing 78-68 to Chattanooga in the first round of the conference tournament.
The Spartans won 81-68 at home on Jan. 27, and 77-74 in Macon on home on Feb. 13.
The largest lead for anybody Monday night was the final score. Mercer’s biggest lead was three with just less than seven minutes left in the first half. There were 11 ties and 14 lead changes.
But UNCG took the lead for good with 3:23 left on a layup by Angelo Allegri, putting the Spartans up 60-58. Miller’s putback after a teammate’s missed putback on another teammate’s missed free throw made it 62-58, and a Miller freebie at 2:39 upped it to 63-58.
The Bears gave it back on a five-second call, and a few trips later, Miller’s fading jumper as the shot clock expired made it 65-58, all but sealing it with 1:33 left.
“He’s the best player in our league, so we should know where he is,” Gary said of Miller. “We gotta do a better job of bottling him up, and we didn’t. He got loose on us quite a few times.”
Mercer couldn’t get shots to fall down the stretch, their final field goal coming with 3:40 left, tying it at 58. The Bears went 0 for 6 from the floor the rest of the way en route to their seventh loss by single digits. They shot 22 of 54, 40.7 percent, after entering the game at a 48.1-percent clip.
“We’re gonna be here again,” said Gary, now 35-26 in two seasons at Mercer and has only one redshirt senior, Cummings, on the roster. “Our guys gotta learn from it.”