By Michael A. Lough

The Sports Report

centralgasports@gmail.com

          For awhile, a game that started under a hunk of sunshine and temperatures in the 60s turned into a Big Ten West Division event.

          Punts and popping.

          The popping of defenses slowed offenses, and seven of the first eight possessions ended in punts.

Box score

          With a visiting team that averaged 28.6 points and a home team getting 27.3? The weather was built for offense, but the defenses came to play.

          Mercer held Gardner-Webb to 49 yards rushing – 116 yards below average – and racked up four turnovers en route to a 17-7 win Saturday at Five Star Stadium in the Bears’ FCS playoff debut.

          “When you hold anybody to seven points, that’s frickin’, that’s unbelievable,” Mercer head coach Drew Cronic said. “A team that had been scoring I think averaging 38 a game the last five or six weeks … That’s the strength of our team right now.”

          The Runnin’ Bulldogs had some chances, but couldn’t sustain much.

          “We came out a little antsy on both sides, gave up some yards in penalties,” said Gardner-Webb head coach – and former Mercer assistant – Tre Lamb, whose team finished at 7-5. “We didn’t get much going offensively in the second half.”

          The 9-3 Bears, who now visit top seeded and defending national champ South Dakota State, recorded 33 negative yards against the Runnin’ Bulldogs’ offense, with three sacks and plenty of hurries.

          “That’s a really good defense,” Lamb said. “Our two best players are running backs. Their defensive front is really good. We knew were going to have to throw it. We tried to get a bunch of different creative formations to throw the football and find matchups. Just didn’t get it done.”

          Lamb was moved to make a quarterback change late, replacing freshman Jaylen King with Gino English, a transfer from Florida State, in hopes to get a two-minute offense going with about seven minutes left, down two scores.

          Mercer’s defense didn’t much care, easing English into an 0-for-6 stint before King came back in. But King, smaller and more athletic, had no more success in the final minutes, throwing an interception to Lance Wise with 2:48 left and Myles Weston in the final minute.

Notable numbers

3 – His 15 tackles put G-W’s William McRainey at 105 tackles for the season, the third straight year the senior from North Carolina passed the 100-tackle mark. He departs 11th on the program’s all-time list
8:02 – That was Mercer’s time of possession advantage, 34:01-25:59, despite running six fewer offensive snaps
18 – The teams combined for 18 punts, 11 by Mercer and 7 by Gardner-Webb
20 – Mercer has forced 20 turnovers in its last eight games, 17 in the last five
81.3 – Mercer had 16 possessions, and 81.3 percent lasted five snaps or less, compared to 68.8 percent for G-W (11 of 16)

          Few would’ve predicted that the game’s leading scorer would’ve been Mercer quarterback Carter Peevy, and that the 6-3, 220-pound sophomore would have the game’s breakway run.

          He went in from the 2 67 seconds into the second quarter, for a 7-0 lead. Mercer’s defense sent G-W backward after a 30-yard gain and gave the offense possession at its own 14.

          On second and 2 from the 28, Peevy took the snap and quickly found wide open spaces, with nary a Bulldog in sight, and sprinted away for a 72-yard scoring run at the 9:18 mark of the second quarter.

          Gardner-Webb answered on its next possession, King completing 4 of 5 for 73 yards and a 3-yard touchdown, pulling G-W within 14-7 with 6:01 left in the half.

          No, that veritable flurry of points did not spark either offense.

          Mercer punted in its final two trips of the half and Gardner-Webb was picked off by Weston, and then ran out the clock on the half.

          Mercer outgained Gardner-Webb by one yard on two fewer plays in the first half, which included 10 punts, six from the Bears. Peevy gained 80 yards, but lost 36 for a game-high net of 44 for the first 30 minutes.

          The Runnin’ Bulldogs stalled on their first third-quarter possession, but left Mercer inside the 1 on the punt.

          Gardner-Webb did nothing with good field position and then watched a 45-yard field goal fall short to the left.  That was eventually reciprocated in both areas.

          Mercer’s 47-yard field goal try – after the Bears stalled following a fumble recover – was short and to the right.

          A few minutes into the fourth quarter on fourth and 25 at G-W’s 29, Mercer’s offense remained on the field only for Peevy to take a few steps back on the snap and punt it, getting a supreme home-field roll to the sideline inside the 1.

          Welcome English the field. For a little more than a dozen seconds and three incompletions. This time, the Bears got points on good field position with Reice Griffith’s 29-yard field goal with 8:48 left in the game.

Notebook

Central Georgia alums
          Washington County’s Warren Coneway and Bleckley County’s Willie Harris each had two tackles for G-W. Tattnall grad Brayden Smith ran once for two yards and returned a kickoff 18 yards for Mercer, while Westside grad Scooter Risper and Northeast grad Travion Solomon each caught a pass for 7 yards. Mary Persons’ Nate Howard has started 11 of 12 games this season.
Missed chances
          Gardner-Webb started two possessions in Mercer territory, on ehte 39 and 32, and got nothing. The Runnin’ Bulldogs turned it over on downs early in the game, and then missed a field goal early in the third quarter. Mercer started on G-W’s side on three straight second-half possessions, and missed a field goal and punted before managing a field goal.
Going out in style
          Greater Atlanta Christian grad Ty James transferred from Georgia, and has made the most of the move. He caught seven passes for 100 yards in his final game at Five Star, and has 3,436 career receiving yards and 30 TD catches. It was his fifth 100-yard game this season. 
They said it
          “Kids were knocking the stew out of each other. It was a pretty hard-hitting game. … We were physical. We knocked those kids around.”
          Mercer head coach Drew Cronic

          On a defensive day, a 10-point difference was a lot.

          From then on, Gardner-Webb embarked on a slow 10-play drive that ended on Wise’s pick, pretty much sealing the Runnin’ Bulldogs’ fate.

          Mercer held running backs Jayden Brown and Narii Gaither to 36 yards on 13 carries.

          “They had 300 yards rushing last week,” Cronic said. “Two good backs, and we shut those guys down. That’s tremendous defense. Tremendous.”

          G-W’s William McRainey led everybody with 15 tackles. Marques Thomas, Ken Standley, and Tavion McCarthy had nine for Mercer, which did get a 100-yard, seven-catch game from standout Ty James as part of a 289-yard offensive night, nine more than G-W on six fewer plays.

          It was a different game than expected.

          “No question,” Lamb said. “We’re a tempo team, and we like to throw it around, and wide split and spread you out. That’s who we are. We kind of want to play a little basketball out there.”

          But the only other team to hold G-W to below 14 points was FBC East Carolina in a 44-0 win in late September.

          “We could not get the first first down to get into tempo,” Lamb said. “We’d pop a big play and all of a sudden, we’d take a sack. We’d pop a big run on a perimeter play, and we could not get over the hump offensively.

          “If you’d have told me they were gonna score 17, I’d have told you we had a great shot. Credit to them. They bowed their neck.”