Mercer basketball: CIT title for Bob Hoffman

Long-time Oklahoma coach Bob Hoffman has another championship. His Mercer University basketball team won the collegeinsider.com Tournament, beating Utah State 70-67 in Logan, Utah, on Wednesday night. Sure, the CIT is a fourth-tier tournament, but Mercer, a member of the Atlantic Sun Conference, was impressive in winning its final three tournament games on the road. Mercer won at Old Dominion, Fairfield and Utah State.

Hoffman has a couple of Oklahomans on his roster. Monty Brown, a 6-foot-11 sophomore  from Liberty, played 10 minutes in the championship game, with four points and one rebound. Brown averaged 4.7 points and 2.5 rebounds for Mercer, which finished 27-11 this season. Brown actually graduated from the Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Conn.

Marquisse Jackson, a 6-foot-5 junior from Bartlesville,  played 26 minutes all season and didn’t score.