Men's Basketball Stunned at North Florida

Monday, February 20

7 pm

Mercer University

North Florida

2/20/2012 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Sophomore Langston Hall led a quartet of Mercer players in double figure scoring, but North Florida junior Parker Smith booked 46 points to lead the Ospreys to a 75-66 win in Monday night's men's basketball game at UNF Arena.

Mercer dropped its second-straight game and fell to 20-9 (12-4 A-Sun) while North Florida went to 15-15 (9-8 A-Sun).

Smith's point total tied the single-game record for an Atlantic Sun conference game and was the first time an A-Sun player has scored 40 or more since Mercer's James Florence tallied 40 at Georgia Tech on November 27, 2009. On Monday night, Parker was 11-of-17 from three-point range, tying a league record for threes made in a single game.

"I think defensively in some cases we weren't in the right place, but he's an unbelievable shooter," Mercer head coach Bob Hoffman said. "Their coaching staff does a great job with those guys."

Hall led the team in scoring for a second-straight game, collecting 17 points in the loss. He also dished four assists and had zero turnovers in 37 minutes of work.

Daniel Coursey had 11 points while Jakob Gollon and Travis Smith contributed 10 apiece.

After UNF scored first, Justin Cecil scored the game's next four points to put Mercer in front. From there, Mercer led by as many as 10 before UNF regained the lead with 3:57 before halftime. All told, the Ospreys closed the half on a 17-3 run to go into the break on top, 36-27.

Smith scored 10 of the hosts' points during that stretch his hot hand got hotter during the intermission. The junior drilled two threes in the opening 64 seconds of the second half to lift UNF to its biggest lead of the game (42-28).

From there, the Bears were forced to play catch-up for the remainder of the game. Mercer got within five on three separate occasions, but UNF repeatedly knocked down big shots to keep a safe buffer.

"I told our guys that they need to let this loss sink in and burn all the way through," Hoffman said. "We need to learn from it and come out stronger and more united."

Mercer lost control of its own destiny in regards to the regular season conference championship race. In order for the Bears to catch Belmont for the No. 1 spot, the team needs to win its final two games and have Kennesaw State upset Belmont on February 23.

Mercer's next game pits the Bears against Lipscomb at the University Center on February 23. Game time is scheduled for 7:30 p.m.