page_title: Mercer Bears
section_title: Men's basketball
hierarchical_section_title: Mercer Bears / Sports / Men's basketball
caption_attribution_description: English: Mercer University's University Center in Macon, Georgia, United States.
context_page_description: The Mercer Bears are the athletic teams of Mercer University in Macon, Georgia, United States. Mercer is the only private university in Georgia with an NCAA Division I athletic program and fields teams in eight men's and nine women's sports. The university competes in the Southern Conference for most sports. In 2013, the football team competed in the Pioneer Football League.
  Mercer joined the Southern Conference as a full member on July 1, 2014; all university-sponsored sports will compete in the Southern Conference except women's lacrosse and women's beach volleyball, which are not sponsored by the conference.
context_section_description: Bob Hoffman – Head Coach
  Bob Hoffman was named men's basketball head coach in 2008.  Prior to Mercer, Hoffman was head coach at Oklahoma Baptist and Texas-Pan American, as well as the Rio Grande Valley Vipers, a NBA D-League team.  Hoffman's overall record as a head coach at the collegiate level is 499–243 (as of the end of the 2012–13 season) including 99 wins at Mercer during his first five seasons (2008–13).  His Mercer wins include victories over Alabama (twice), Auburn, Duke, Georgia Tech, Florida State (then the defending Atlantic Coast Conference champion), and Tennessee.
  History
  Hoffman replaced Mark Slonaker who served as head coach for ten seasons and was the 2002–03 Jim Phelan National Coach of the Year.  Slonaker received that award after leading Mercer to the best one season turnaround in NCAA history, improving from 6–23 to 23–6.  The team won the Atlantic Sun regular season championship with a 14–2 conference record and made school history for number of wins (23); Mercer won 22 games in 1923–24 and 1984–85.  The season ended with a loss in the Atlantic Sun tournament.  Slonaker was the first National Coach of the Year to receive the award after it was named in honor of Jim Phelan.  The four other finalists were Lute Olson (Arizona), Skip Prosser (Wake Forest), Bo Ryan (Wisconsin), and Tubby Smith (Kentucky).  Mercer did not maintain this level of success, which prompted the university to hire a new head coach.
  Mercer's basketball alumni include Sam Mitchell, a retired NBA player who became head coach of the Toronto Raptors.  Mitchell was drafted with the seventh pick of the third round (54th overall) by the Houston Rockets in the 1985 NBA draft.  He scored nearly 2,000 points at Mercer, the leading scorer in team history, and led Mercer to the 1985 Trans-America Athletic Conference regular season and tournament championships.  More recent alumni include Will Emerson, a forward on the men's basketball team, who was the 2004–05 and 2005–06 Atlantic Sun Conference Male Student Athlete of the Year, only the third person to be selected twice for the award.  Emerson was also named to ESPN the Magazine's Academic All-American first team in 2005 and 2006.
  Mercer received national attention in November 2007 when the team defeated USC, which was ranked 18th in the nation at the time of the game.
  Recent Achievements
  In 2012, Mercer won the CollegeInsider.com Postseason Tournament following the 2011–12 season; the first Atlantic Sun Conference team to win a postseason championship.  During the tournament, the team defeated Tennessee State, Georgia State, Old Dominion and Fairfield en route to the championship game at Utah State University; Mercer won the championship game 70–67.  The championship capped the best season in university history; the team finished the season with a 27–11 record.
  In 2013, Mercer won the conference regular season championship and advanced to the National Invitation Tournament, defeating Tennessee before losing to BYU; the team finished the season with a 24–12 record, the first time in university history that the team had back-to-back 20-win seasons.  Mercer had opened the season ranked first in the conference preseason standings; during the season, notable wins included victories over defending Atlantic Coast Conference champion Florida State and Alabama.
  In 2014, Mercer won the conference regular season championship for the second year in a row (co-champion, tied with Florida Gulf Coast) and the conference tournament championship; the team defeated Florida Gulf Coast for the tournament championship and advanced to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 1985.  During the regular season, notable wins included victories over Seton Hall and Ole Miss.  At the conclusion of the conference tournament, Mercer had a record of 26–8, the first time in university history the team had three straight 20-win seasons.  Mercer coach Bob Hoffman was honored as the conference coach of the year for the second consecutive year; Mercer players were honored as the conference player of the year (guard, Langs
caption: University Center (Hawkins Arena)
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