Fort Myers, FL (SportsNetwork.com) – For Mercer, revenge is sweet.<\/p>\n
Langston Hall and Anthony White Jr. each scored 15 points as the Bears held off late-charging Florida Gulf Coast 68-60 to capture the Atlantic Sun Conference Tournament title and book their first trip to the NCAA Tournament in 29 years.<\/p>\n
The game was a rematch of last year’s final, won by Florida Gulf Coast on Mercer’s home floor.<\/p>\n
Mercer returned the favor on Sunday, ending the Eagles’ 12-game home winning streak and their hopes of another storybook run in the NCAA Tournament. FGCU advanced to the Sweet 16 as a No. 15 seed, knocking off both Georgetown and San Diego State.<\/p>\n
The Bears (26-8), who will join the Southern Conference next season, got 13 points from Daniel Coursey.<\/p>\n
Brett Comer and Bernard Thompson scored 14 points apiece for an Eagles (22-12) team that fell behind by 18 in the first half and nearly climbed out of the hole.<\/p>\n
The start to the game was delayed due to a power problem at Alico Arena, where FGCU had won 17 straight against A-Sun teams.<\/p>\n
The issue was a harbinger of the Eagles’ flickering offense in the first half.<\/p>\n
FGCU shot 20.8 percent (5-of-24) and Mercer seized control behind a 20-2 run.<\/p>\n
The Bears were cold shooting to begin the second half, missing 11-of-12 from the floor, and the Eagles chipped away at the deficit.<\/p>\n
They pulled to within 43-42 on a Chase Fieler layup with 8:50 remaining, but couldn’t move ahead. FGCU held the lead only once in the game, after Thompson opened the scoring with a free throw.<\/p>\n
Mercer responded with a 7-0 run to create a little distance.<\/p>\n
FGCU continued to hang around, with a Thompson layup closing the gap to 59-56 with 2:29 to play. Eric McKnight was fouled on the play, but missed both free throws for the Eagles.<\/p>\n
Hall then hit a pullup jumper and Coursey sank two free throws to make it 63-56 with one minute left.<\/p>\n
Game Notes<\/p>\n
FGCU became the fourth team to reach the A-Sun title game three straight years … Both teams went 14-4 to share the regular-season league title, but FGCU won the tiebreaker for the top seed … Thompson became the Eagles’ all-time leading scorer with 1,379 points. He passed Ryan Hopkins, who had 1,367 points from 2002-05 … Comer registered five assists to tie Bryan Crislip (2002-05) for the most in school history with 606.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Fort Myers, FL (SportsNetwork.com) – For Mercer, revenge is sweet. Langston Hall and Anthony White Jr. each scored 15 points as the Bears held off late-charging Florida Gulf Coast 68-60 to capture the Atlantic Sun Conference Tournament title and book their first trip to the NCAA Tournament in 29 years. The game was a rematch […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[242],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ncaa-basketball"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15680"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15680\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}