Central Georgia Sports ReportComment

Mercer gets very good news: The Bears are in the FCS playoffs, and they're at home, with a familiar face and name returning to Five Star

Central Georgia Sports ReportComment
Mercer gets very good news: The Bears are in the FCS playoffs, and they're at home, with a familiar face and name returning to Five Star

By Michael A. Lough

The Sports Report

centralgasports@gmail.com

 

          Drew Cronic has been pretty blunt for a few weeks.

          If Mercer didn’t get an at-large bid to the FCS playoffs, well, something was very wrong.

          Nothing was wrong after all.

          As per most projections predicted, Mercer and its head coach got the good news a little after lunchtime Sunday – a day of prayer – that they were set to make its FCS playoff debut.

          The Bears waited 17 minutes into the show to get the good news, after several minutes of on-air discussion about teams picked as seeds.

          Just as big? Mercer will be at home for its postseason debut, with kickoff set for 3 p.m. at Five Star Stadium.

          A projection had Mercer at Austin Peay, another sending the Bears to Gardner-Webb, another pairing the Bears with North Carolina Central.

          As it turns out, the Bears will host two-time defending Big South (and first-year OVC/Big South) champ Gardner-Webb, which has a notable Mercer connection.

          Head coach Tre Lamb coached quarterbacks at Mercer from 2014-17, mentoring coached quarterback John Russ – a former assistant at Tattnall and now head coach at Providence Christian – under uncle and head coach Bobby Lamb, now starting up the Division II program in Anderson, S.C.  He was the Bears’ passing game coordinator for two seasons.

          The Runnin’ Bulldogs will have some support at Five Star. Gardner-Webb has nearly three dozen players from Georgia, including redshirt sophomore defensive back Warren Coneway of Washington County and junior defensive lineman Willie Harris of Bleckley County.

          Coneway has nine tackles in eight games, Harris nine tackles in 10 games. Coneway’s brother Will played linebacker at Mercer from 2016-19.

Mercer beat Gardner-Webb 45-14 last season in Boiling Springs.

          Playoff football is nothing new to Cronic, a reason he’s now at Mercer in the first place.

          As head coach at Reinhardt, Cronic made the NAIA playoffs in both seasons, reaching the semifinals once. At Lenoir-Rhyne, Cronic won two South Atlantic titles and reached the Division II quarterfinals in both years.

          As an assistant at Furman and Reinhardt, the postseason was the rule, not the exception. So this is his longest stretch without making a playoff.