Mark Slonaker
Mark Slonaker
Mark Slonakeris an American college basketball coach. He is the former head men's basketball coach at Mercer University. He was the 2002–03 Jim Phelan National Coach of the Year 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; Mercer won 22 games in 1923–24 and 1984–85. The season ended with...
hard hard-work lose point reward tough win
You get to the point where you have to win to reward yourself for the hard work. You don't want to lose another tough one. I didn't want to think about it.
games pose problems rest ways win
They just find ways to win games. They pose problems for us. They're 7-1 in the league; they've posed a lot of problems for the rest of the league.
dribble florida kept north offensive
Dribble penetration and 21 offensive rebounds. That kept North Florida in the game.
coming error five half keys knew margin minutes outside second shooting zone
We knew coming in that our margin of error was slim. We wanted to play more zone but their outside shooting prevented that. Our turnovers in the first half and the first five minutes of the second half were the keys to the game.
felt fighting fights-and-fighting frustrated internal sign
I felt like the first sign of some internal fighting (emerged), getting frustrated and teeing off on each other. I wanted to nip that in the bud.
huge momentum obviously plays stay
Obviously that five-point play was a huge momentum switch. It's disappointing. Then we couldn't make the plays to stay even after the five-point play.
win
It's just devastating that we couldn't get the win for them. That was a big thing for us.
shots
They got 14 more shots because of our turnovers. They scored off our turnovers.
good phases team
They're a very good team in all phases of the game.
areas attack defending defense five leaves start
They start five guards. That leaves them some liabilities on defense because of their size. You've got some areas you can attack them. But at the same time, when you're defending them, it makes it rough.
games match tend
We're just always pretty evenly-matched. We tend to match up well, and that's why games go down to the wire. This one should, too.
academic attempts classroom efforts glad hope proud recognized repeat team
We are proud of Will's efforts in the classroom and we are glad to see that he is being recognized for his accomplishments. We hope this will bode well for him as he attempts to repeat as a first team Academic All-America selection.
capable kids
Wow. They're kids who are capable of going off for 20 (points) on you anytime.
hold lead manage
Campbell, we couldn't hold the lead, and Gardner-Webb. Maine, Howard, we couldn't manage the lead late.