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MACON, Ga. -- The Samford University basketball team will compete in its third road game in 10 days Saturday as the Bulldogs play at the Mercer Bears for the first time in over 13 years in a key Southern Conference contest slated to be held at Hawkins Arena at 3 p.m. (CST). Saturday's game will be broadcast to a worldwide audience via ESPN3.
 
Samford (7-13, 0-7 SoCon) will hit the hardwood in Macon, Georgia, for the first time since Nov. 29, 2001, when the Bulldogs and Bears were both fierce competitors in the Atlantic Sun Conference.
 
Mercer (10-9, 5-1 SoCon) is Samford's longest all-time rival and the teams will be meeting for the 105th time Saturday.
 
The Bulldogs will be looking to snap a five-game losing streak, while Mercer has won four of its last five and is coming off back-to-back triumphs against The Citadel and Furman.
 
Mercer boasts a near-perfect 7-1 record at home this season and a stellar 54-6 mark at Hawkins Arena since the beginning of the 2011-12 campaign.
 
The Bears have been victorious in three-consecutive games held at Hawkins Arena, dating back to a 67-51 setback against Dartmouth on Dec. 16. Since then, Mercer has rattled off consecutive home wins versus Bethune-Cookman, 67-46, The Citadel, 74-51, and Furman, 67-64.
 
The Bears' leading scorer this season is junior guard Ike Nwamu, who is averaging 16 points and 3.6 rebounds per game. He has also knocked down a team-high 43 3-pointers this year.
 
Against Chattanooga on Thursday, Samford jumped out to a 10-point lead, held a three-point advantage at the intermission, but misfired from the free-throw line down the stretch as the Bulldogs dropped an 82-76 Southern Conference decision held at the Pete Hanna Center.
 
Samford earned a total of 42 trips to the charity stripe Thursday, but only connected on 26 for a lackluster 61.9 percentage from the free-throw line.
 
Despite their shooting struggles, the Bulldogs only trailed Chattanooga, 78-74, with 29 seconds left.
 
After Samford's Darius Jones-Gibson scored a layup to trim the Mocs' advantage to four points, Chattanooga's Greg Pryor connected on a trio of free throws in the ensuing 10 seconds of play. During the stretch, Jones-Gibson also connected on a free throw of his own.
 
Samford's Jones-Gibson, who finished Thursday's contest with a season-high 24 points on 9-of-13 shooting from the field, made his sixth free throw of the game with 12 seconds left to play to make the score 81-76 in favor of the Mocs.
 
The Bulldogs were forced to foul Chattanooga's Ronrico White in the last 10 seconds of action as he then connected on a free throw to make the final score, 82-76.
 
Jones-Gibson finished 6-of-14 from the charity stripe for Samford on Thursday, while adding five rebounds, three steals and a pair of assists.
 
The key stretch of the game occurred midway through the second half as Chattanooga rallied for a 14-2 run to take a 71-58 lead with 4:21 remaining to play. The Mocs' scoring burst was aided by seven straight points from Martynas Bareika, as well as five from Tre' McLean.
 
Samford led for 26 of the 40 minutes of the game, but ended up getting out-rebounded by the Mocs, 36-28, including a 14-7 disparity on the offensive boards.
 
The Bulldogs' Jones-Gibson paced Samford in scoring Thursday against Chattanooga as he scored a career-high 24 points on 9-of-13 shooting from the field. Jones-Gibson, Samford's explosive guard from Lexington, Kentucky, is averaging 15.7 points and 3.4 rebounds per game since Dec. 28, 2014.
 
Jones-Gibson is ranked No. 15 in the nation with 122 free-throw attempts this season.
 
On Saturday, Samford will renew its longest all-time rivalry with the Mercer Bears.
 
The Bulldogs have squared off against Mercer for a school-record 104 times, dating all the way back to Feb. 21, 1903, when Samford registered a lopsided 34-11 decision. The teams last met Dec. 7, 2011 in Birmingham, Alabama, as the Bears rallied for an 83-78 win at the Pete Hanna Center.
 
Eight of the Bulldogs' 15 players are in the midst of their first season at Samford University, and only two (Brandon Hayman and Tyler Hood) have been on the roster longer than two years.
 
Three of the Bulldogs' probable starters, Christen Cunningham, Jones-Gibson and Evan Taylor are in their inaugural seasons at Samford.
 
Cunningham is a highly-touted freshman point guard from Georgetown, Kentucky, while Jones-Gibson, a native of Lexington, Kentucky, transferred in the summer from Barton County Community College. Additionally, Taylor is a high-flying true freshman guard from Cincinnati, Ohio.
 
Nine of the Bulldogs' 15 members of the 2014-15 roster are underclassmen. Samford boasts four true freshmen this season in Cunningham, Alex Peters, Gerald Smith and Evan Taylor, while Eric Adams, Ryan Dickey, Nnamdi Enechionyia, Emeka Ikezu and Brandon Roberts comprise the Bulldogs' talented sophomore class.
 
The Samford basketball team was picked 10th in the preseason SoCon rankings on Oct. 15, and the Bulldogs have been using that last-place prediction as fuel and motivation for the 2014-15 campaign.
 
"We're definitely using it as motivation," said Samford senior forward Tyler Hood. "We have big 10s plastered all over the locker room, so it's a constant reminder for us and we take that extra motivation into every practice. Every day, we strive to be competitive and to push each other to get better in each and every practice. Ultimately, we go out every day with plans of being the best that we can possibly be."
 
One of Head Coach Scott Padgett's top themes this season is #PlayFast. Samford's first-year skipper looks to have his team press full-court for 40 minutes and then push the ball up the court on the offensive attack.
 
"The thing that's going to get us playing fast offensively is going to be our defense," said Padgett. "We're going to be a defensive team. There are going to be a lot of times when we score a lot of points, but those points are going to be directly related to playing great defense and getting the rebound. Once we get a defensive rebound, we will be pushing to get a layup every time down the court, or at least a wide-open shot.
 
"We're going to be in attack-mode all game long. We teach our guys that we want to dictate what the offense does when we're on defense, and we also want to dictate what their defense does when we are on the offensive side of the ball. There will be times when teams try to slow us down, but we're going to keep the game going 90 miles per hour all the time."
 
Following Saturday's key showdown at Mercer, the Samford University basketball team will next be in action Thursday at 7 p.m. (CST) as the Bulldogs begin a 10-day, three-game SoCon homestand against the UNCG Spartans in a critical league contest to be held at the Pete Hanna Center.

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