MACON, Ga. - Eventually, the mistakes being made by the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga football team were going to come back to hurt the Mocs.
They had been able to ease by opponents on the road all season despite interceptions, lost fumbles and inconsistency in the red zone.
Saturday they dug a hole they couldn't recover from.
The third-ranked Mocs had four turnovers, missed a field-goal try and turned the ball over on downs inside the Mercer 1-yard line. They still had a chance to pull out the win but fell 17-14 to the Bears in front of 9,527 fans at Five Star Stadium.
The loss - which ends UTC's 12-game win streak in conference play - will assuredly drop the Mocs in the national rankings, but they still have a chance to win the conference title and the automatic bid into the playoffs by defeating The Citadel (7-2, 6-0) at Finley Stadium this Saturday.
The Mocs outgained Mercer by 82 yards and forced a pair of turnovers of their own, including an interception by Lucas Webb that was the first suffered by Bears quarterback John Russ this season.
"Our guys played hard," UTC coach Russ Huesman said. "Our guys fought - I'm proud of the fight they gave. We got after it; they got after us; they played a really good game. They were ready to play and they fought, but we can't turn the ball over four times and not punch it in from the 1-yard line. We can't do those things and expect to win a game."
Jacob Huesman threw for 197 yards while rushing for 112, but he threw two interceptions. Derrick Craine had 102 yards rushing but lost a fumble.
"Our defense fought hard and our offense fought hard, but we shot ourselves in the foot with turnovers," Craine said. "Mercer is an outstanding team. We fought hard - you can't judge our effort - but we fell short.
"Honestly, they outplayed us today."
Quarterback Huesman threw an interception on the game's first possession when the ball skidded through the hands of a UTC player. Two possessions later, Mercer took a 7-0 lead on a 1-yard sneak by Russ. The Mocs answered on their next possession, going 82 yards on 13 plays with Huesman barreling in from 7 yards out to tie the game.
Mercer's Jagger Lieb made a 19-yard field goal with 6:55 to play in the first half for a 10-7 advantage - a lead the Bears took into the locker room when Henrique Ribeiro missed a field-goal try right before the end of the half.
The Bears stretched their lead to 17-7 on Jimmie Robinson's 64-yard catch-and-run for a score early in the third quarter. UTC responded by driving to the Mercer 1-yard line, but two Huesman runs were stopped at the goal line and the Bears took over.
Craine fumbled on the next possession, but Webb intercepted a pass on the very next play, and the Mocs took advantage by scoring on a Huesman run with 12:46 to play in the game.
The UTC defense held to give the Mocs two more opportunities, but their final two possessions ended in a lost fumble and an interception with 3:57 to play. The Bears then converted three first downs to put the game away.
Webb finished with 10 tackles for UTC, while Josh Freeman had eight. Nakevion Leslie and Isaiah Mack had seven each.
"Tonight was very frustrating," Leslie said. "We were hoping to keep the streak going, but to come out here and have a loss hurts pretty bad. We need to pick it up. We can't make a big deal out of one or two plays; we have to play a full 60-minute game.
"They just made more plays at the end of the day."
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him at twitter.com/genehenleytfp.