By MONTE DUTTON

Tyler Wesley passed for 281 yards and rushed for 28. (Monte Dutton photos)

SPARTANBURG – Cally Gault used to talk about it at the drop of a derby hat: that fighting Blue Hose spirit.

It reared its lovely head at Gibbs Stadium on Saturday evening as Presbyterian stunned Wofford, 23-20. It wasn’t a stunner back in the old days. It was a rivalry. The Terriers had won seven in a row. The series hadn’t been resumed in five years, but this was worth the wait over on the visitors’ side, where a thousand or so of the 3,907 on hand showed boisterous support.

Once they were both in the NAIA, the Blue Hose and Terriers. Then NCAA Division II. Then Division I, FCS, where the rivals went their separate ways. Wofford prospered in the Southern Conference, and PC flunked out of the Big South. Then PC flew off to the Pioneer Football League and dropped the ballast of scholarships somewhere over the Rockies.

The above was a long story short. Saturday evening was a short story long.

All the locker room lacked was a Lombardi Trophy to look like the Blue Hose had just won the Super Bowl. The players had lingered on the field, making their way to the locker room in exultant groups yelling at no one but an empty stadium. The rest of the team may have been on the bus by the time one made it. He may have considered spending the night at midfield if anyone had killed the lights.

With 28 seconds to go in the game, Presbyterian quarterback Tyler Wesley, on fourth-down-and-six from the 18-yard line, hit Worth Warner for the game-winner. It was the third fourth-down conversion of the 76-yard drive. On the first such emergency, Wofford’s Matthew Clayton roughed Wesley, nullifying an interception by Maximus Pulley that would have wrapped up the game for the Terriers. On the second such emergency, Wesley scrambled up the middle for 11 yards when he needed 10.

Mack Mikko’s 37-yard field goal, this third of the game, had brought the Blue Hose within four points with 9:55 on the clock.

“Our kids played so physical,” said PC head coach Steve Englehart. “We’ve got a bunch of guys on this team who are friends with guys on their team.”

In a nutshell, the Blue Hose, who only had dropped scholarships and lost 20 of their previous 24 games, felt disrespected. Imagine that.

“It was all about gaining respect,” Englehart added. “Our kids were hungry, and fired up, and tough. And they just played tough. And relentless. I challenged them to play with tenacity.”

“They probably took it overboard. Sometimes they got a little bit scrappy with them, but for a team that has zero scholarships to come and beat a team that has 63 of them, you have to play with tenacity. You have to play tough, and we did it and found a way to win.”

It all caught one veteran sportswriter by complete surprise. He had expected a great high-school game the night before between Chapman and Clinton. He knew PC had gotten better.  He knew Wofford had fallen on hard times, but as he watched the Blue Hose players almost skipping up the sidewalk from the field to their locker room, screaming against all who had not believed in them, he thought, My God, man, y’all don’t know what I’ve seen.

He wasn’t writing about the team back when Presbyterian College drove its Chevy to the levee and the levee was dry. He was tailgating with players’ parents. He remembered what it had felt like when, year after year, the scholarships dwindled away.

The team that beat Wofford (0-3) is on its first two-game win streak since Kevin Kelley won his only two. Hey, Englehart has three!

They should feel exultant. They should bob up and down, screaming and yelling and dousing one another. Beating Wofford was incredible for PC’s present state and splendidly nostalgic for its history.

Presbyterian (2-1) broke on top 4 minutes, 31 seconds in the game on Wesley’s 56-yard touchdown pass to Deverious Abercrombie. Wesley is a sophomore from Saint Cloud, Fla. Abercrombie is a soph from Greenville. Mikko, who added a 41-yard field goal early in the second quarter, and two more later, is a freshman from Newnan, Ga.

Warner, who caught seven passes including the game-winner, is a senior from Raleigh, N.C., a sturdy, 6-4 tight end who stayed despite in Englehart’s words, being “dared to transfer.

“After the game, he told me, ‘This is why I stayed.’ I knew because he’s told other players, just stay. Stick it out,” said Englehart.

The whole team stuck it out.

Wesley threw 41 times and only hit 16 but didn’t throw an interception (that counted) and dropped up 281 yards of figurative bombs and shrapnel on the Wofford defenders. The disrespected offense piled up 95 more yards, 164 more through the air. Seventy of the Terriers’ 193 net rushing yards were on one play, Bryan Corriston’s dash in the second quarter. He had eight more the rest of the night.

One night does not a season make, and this one was worth time to savor. The Blue Hose have a week off before they travel to Indianapolis, Ind., to play Butler on Sept. 30.

In the meantime, savor the stats here.

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