By MONTE DUTTON

By Monday, Furman was over the shame of beating The Citadel by two touchdowns.

As Robert Duvall, as Augustus Macrae, said, “They’s worse thangs.”

The sense of urgency now is for the Paladins to play better because the rest of the Southern Conference season is angry on the road and peaceful at home, and undoubtedly head coach Clay Hendrix would prefer the reverse.

“It all goes back to holding one another accountable,” said Hendrix. “Our kids are playing hard. I know it’s important to them. We’re preparing well, but there are things we have to do better if we’re going to get to where we want to be. The [Citadel] game was a perfect example. We had too many mental mistakes. It was simple stuff. … We’ve got to do the little things a little better than we’re doing them.

“We ask our players to do the common tasks uncommonly well, and we didn’t do them well [versus The Citadel].”

The remaining road games are Samford (3-3, 2-2 SoCon) this week, followed immediately by Western Carolina, then Chattanooga and Wofford in the finale. Furman (4-1, 2-0) is 3-0 at Paladin Stadium, where only East Tennessee State and Virginia Military are left to visit.

Furman’s remaining road opponents are currently a combined 22-14, 11-7 in the SoCon, while the remaining home opponents are 3-7 and 1-3.

It was a businesslike crew – Hendrix, offensive guard Jacob Johanning and spur Cally Chizik – who looked ahead to the next Bulldogs, the last SoCon team to defeat Furman, eight games ago, and the reigning league champs.

Johanning is 6-3, 295, from Simpsonville. Chizik is 5-8, 183, from Auburn, Ala. Both are red-shirt seniors. Their personalities are more comparable than their statures.

Chizik, who intercepted a Citadel pass on Saturday, has made a habit out of big plays. His father, Gene, is defensive coordinator at North Carolina and won a national championship as head coach at Auburn in 2010.

“It’s not personally me every single time,” Cally Chizik said. “The coaches do a great job of schematically putting us in position to make big plays. A lot of them, I can’t take credit for.”

Samford (3-3, 2-2 SoCon) is coming off a 31-10 win at Wofford. All evidence points to this breed of Bulldog being superior to the one The Citadel is showing off this season. The ones kenneled in Homewood, Ala., near Birmingham, are a bit off but still worrisome.

Already the Bulldogs have lost to Western Carolina (30-7), Auburn (45-13) and Chattanooga (47-24), but they’ve won the last two over ETSU (42-28) and Wofford.

“We’ve just got to control what we can control,” Hendrix said. “We’re going to be challenged. … It’ll be an interesting next six weeks in the Southern Conference.”

Samford has a quarterback, Michael Hiers, widely considered the best in the SoCon, but he’s already thrown seven interceptions. In Greenville last year, Hiers completed 29/38 passes for 228 yards in the Bulldog’s 34-27 victory.

“I don’t think you can wholesale anything against [Hiers],” Hendrix said. “He recognizes things well.

“Hopefully, you take away the run game away from them and make it an all-passing game. They will certainly run it if you give them the opportunity. He’s mobile, but he’s not their running threat.”

Furman’s Tyler Huff was out to injury that day, Oct. 1, 2022. His replacement, the transferred Jace Wilson, launched 59 passes, completing 38, for 329 yards and three touchdowns. Yet the Paladins entered the fourth quarter trailing by 17 points. From the Furman perspective, the game will be long remembered for The Call That Will Live in Infamy – blown, reversed, reversed (and blown) again — but it was the game’s turning point, not the decisive moment.

“We lost that football game because, from that point on, they outplayed us and outcoached us,” Hendrix said. “That call was not the reason we lost that game.”

It provides incentive, but how much does a team ranked fourth in the nation need?

“Motivation can only take a team so far,” Chizik said. “You’ve got to go execute. … The biggest thing is going out there, and no matter how motivated [both teams] are, what’s important is outplaying and out-executing them.”

“Once the ball is kicked off, motivation doesn’t matter,” Johanning added. “It comes down to who’s better. It comes down to who does the job better and who cares in that moment.”

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