By MONTE DUTTON

Gosh, it was glorious. Packed house. Timmons Arena rocking. Band playing. Young women dancing about. The Paladins gallantly resisted the onslaught of Terriers yapping about and dispatched them, 82-67, on Saturday afternoon.

If you want to go literal, the neighboring rivals, Furman and Wofford, were playing men’s basketball. Modern times have rendered canine attacks unacceptable. Basketball is wildly exciting, considerably more civilized, and takes up less space.

Wofford, damn it, plays an admirable brand of roundball. It is a hard team to beat by much. In fact, the 15-point Furman margin was the second largest of any Terrier Southern Conference loss to date. Wofford (15-14, 8-8) lost to Chattanooga by 16, 81-65, in its previous game. Furman (16-13, 10-6) handed the Terriers their third straight loss. They fought an admirable war of attrition, though.
As an aside, Wofford has a 3-1 record in overtime.

The Terriers’ head coach, Dwight Perry, and Furman’s Bob Richey served as assistant coaches for five years together. They do a little mirror driving.

“We know each other well,” Richey said. “What he values is what I value in a lot of ways.

“Credit to them. They kept playing, as I knew they would. Dwight does a great job. They play hard. They play connected. They’ve got good schemes on both ends of the court, and they keep battling.”

“They just play hard,” said Furman guard Patrick Smith Jr., a.k.a., PJay. “They’re always crashing the glass, trying to get extra possessions, and they’re going to make you pay if you leave them open. Them playing hard allows them to stay in most games.”

Furman sparkled, and J.P. Pegues and Marcus Foster, each of whom scored 20 points, set off the brightest.

Pegues’s ballhandling beguiled the Wofford defenders, he grabbed five rebounds and  created other scores with four assists. He didn’t commit a turnover. The whole team had three, a season low.

“Wofford’s a super rival, year in, year out, so the emotions will always be ‘times 10’ of what they would be in your usual game,” Pegues said. “When we play Wofford, it’s always going to be, we want to beat those guys. They don’t like us. We don’t like them. You know what I mean?

Foster hit 6/14 shots, and 5/11 were threes, and all three free throws he was granted. He led the team in rebounds with eight.

Furman led by only five, 44-39, at halftime. The game was tied six times and changed hands four times, but Wofford led for only 3 minutes, 52 seconds all day.

Wofford, led by burly Kyler Filewich’s 11, won the rebounding tussle, 39-33, but it had dominated more in its earlier victory in Spartanburg, where the margin was 49-37. The Terriers made 12 turnovers; Furman’s Smith stole four of them.

Smith scored 13, Ben Vander Wal 11, but almost everyone, including Alex Williams, made their mark. Williams, freed from suspension, scored five points with two rebounds and an assist. Vander Wal – two steals, two rebounds – and Garrett Hien – four points, three rebounds, three assists and a steal – were all over the floor and often diving onto it. Same for Carter Whitt, who didn’t score but passed out three assists.

Furman’s guards didn’t have any turnovers.

The Paladins began the second half on a 13-5 run, thanks to back-to-back triples from Foster, to lead 57-44 at the first radio/TV timeout of the second half.

After Furman stretched its lead to as many as 16 points, Wofford rallied to trim the margin to 71-62 with 4:08 remaining following a 7-0 spurt. The Paladins, however, got threes on consecutive possessions from Foster and Smith immediately after another timeout and Furman held Wofford without a field goal for a stretch of 3:42 to nail it down.

Wofford’s leading scorers were Jackson Sivills, Chase Cormier and Dillon Bailey, each with 11. Both teams hit 12 extra-pointers. The Terriers shot a slightly higher percentage of threes; the Paladins shot a slightly higher percentage overall.

The victory was Furman’s fourth in its last five games and fifth in its last six meetings versus Wofford.

Furman travels to Western Carolina for a 7 p.m. tipoff on Wednesday at Ramsey Center. The game will air live on ESPNU. The Paladins are back at Timmons Arena to host Mercer in the regular-season finale next Saturday, March 2, at 2 p.m.

Take a look at the stats.

It was great to be back at Timmons Arena. I’ve tried to keep up best I could. At least one story has been posted for 41 days, a record for the site. I’m strapped for cash but still writing as hard and resourcefully as I can, scrounging up money for Asheville.

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