Mercer Bears arrange student buses to NCAA tournament
By Lorenzo Reyes March 23, 2014 5:50 pm
BY NICOLE AUERBACH
(Rob Kinnan-USA TODAY Sports)
RALEIGH, N.C. — They poured out of 10 buses decked in orange and black, many in tank tops and shorts. The weather was apparently a bit warmer in Macon, Ga., Sunday.
More than 500 Mercer students jogged quickly from the parking lot toward PNC Arena, where they'd watch their Mercer men's basketball team take on No. 11 Tennessee with a trip to the Sweet 16 on the line.
Before entering the arena, the students lined up for photos and a few chants, including the iconic, "I believe that we will win!"
Mercer had arranged for six buses to take students up to Raleigh for Friday's game against Duke. After the win, the university's office of campus life, athletic department and Mercer Maniacs student section leaders immediately began plotting a return trip for Sunday's round-of-32 matchup. They had to use multiple bus companies to get all 10 that they needed.
"It's not like other student sections where they're fighting against the administration," said Kevin Eck, a mechanical engineering graduate student who helped create the Mercer Maniacs, which used to be called Hoffman's Hooligans. "They really do a lot to support us. They do things like making 10 buses of students possible.
"It's really cool to see what's happening at Mercer."
For Sunday's game, Mercer fans are doing a "black out" because the orange they wore on Friday could potentially be confused with Tennessee's orange. Students wrangled together some black tank tops they'd previously bought (and had extras) after winning the Atlantic Sun championship, Eck said.
On Sunday, the students gathered on campus around 6:30 a.m. — "which might as well be 1 in the morning to college students," sophomore Paul Johnson said — and began their trek about an hour later. They stopped for food once and arrived in Raleigh around 4 p.m.
"You go to a rest stop, and it's like locusts coming down off the buses, a non-stop stream of students," Eck said. "It was like an invasion."
Eck said most students "were asleep through Georgia," but the ones on his bus woke up soon after and they watched the movie Gladiator. (He said on the pre-Duke trip his bus watched underdog movies, like Hoosiers.)
Johnson, a sophomore engineering student, made the trip after skipping the Duke game because of other commitments.
"As soon as I hear they were doing it again, I jumped on," Johnson said. "It was $25 for the whole trip, so it was a real good deal."
The $25 includes a ticket and travel costs. To help make it that affordable for students, Mercer athletic director Jim Cole said he recruited some boosters to contribute.
It cost upward of $50,000 to bus the students up for Friday's game (which included putting them up in hotel rooms Thursday night), and will likely cost a similar amount for Sunday's. The students plan to bus back immediately after the game and return to Macon in the early hours of the morning.​
Bob Hoffman, Mercer Bears, NCAA Tournament, NCAA