For a night, Mercer arrived at Bon Secours Wellness Arena to wash Furman’s sins away. The Paladins led by 23 points in the first half. Then the Bears got as close as seven in the second. The final margin was 24, 96-72.
The word for the way Furman opened was one of those terms often used but seldom defined.
Gangbusters. The Paladins began like gangbusters.
Supposedly, it refers to “a police officer or other person who takes part in breaking up criminal gangs.” It seemed unfair to unnecessarily demonize the Bears. Mercer was merely inept at the outset. Furman led, 18-4, before the game was six minutes old. The Paladins popped six of their first eight triples.

In fairness to Mercer (11-15, 4-9), the Bears looked seriously bad in the first half, not all the way. Mercer put together an 8-0 run, but even then, a Tom House triple quickly restored the lead to 16 points. It was 17 (52-35) at halftime.
Mercer’s hard times didn’t last. The Bears rediscovered prosperity.

“We’ve proven we’re a good basketball team,” head coach Bob Richey said later to Dan Scott on radio. “But we’ve got to play consistent. The energy’s got to show up. The effort’s got to show up.
“It was good for us to have to answer the bell when they cut the lead down.”
The second half wasn’t pretty. Furman’s defensive intensity wavered, but the Paladins managed to keep Mercer at arm’s length. This is not a Furman team with a knack for putting the opposition away, and what was once a 23-point lead dwindled to single digits in the latter half.

What quieted Mercer was a five-point possession that began with a flagrant foul against Ben Vander Wal, who converted two free throws, and Smith followed it with a 3-pointer. From there, happy minutes and spectacular seconds returned.

Junior Tom House scored a career-high 26 points and gave head coach Bob Richey what he had been seeking, a third scoring force.
The Dayton, Ohio, native connected on 6/9 threes to pace five Paladins in double figures as Furman posted its highest offensive output versus a Division I opponent this season and splashed 18 triples for the first time this year. The victory improved the Paladins to 19-7 overall and 7-6 in league play while Mercer dipped to 11-15 overall and 4-9.

The SoCon’s balance is maddening. As the regular season winds down, the importance of securing one of the top six seeds gets more and more frenzied. Fourth to seventh is two games: ETSU (8-5), Wofford (8-5), Furman (7-6) and VMI (6-7). Samford and Furman have the SoCon’s best overall records (19-7), but the Bulldogs (9-4) and Paladins are third and sixth in the conference records.
Three of Furman’s final three games are at home, where the Paladins are 11-2, but the road games, at Samford and Wofford, are against teams ranked higher in the standings.
“In this league, there are no nights off,” Richey said on post-game radio.

It was Furman’s widest margin of victory in a SoCon game since its opener, a 90-61 win at Western Carolina on New Year’s Day.
Furman opened the game on a 13-2 run and increased its advantage to 33-12 on Nick Anderson’s triple with 10:08 left in the first half. Mercer trimmed the margin to 52-25 at the half and cut Furman’s lead to 71-64 with under 10 minutes to play, but the Paladins responded with a 14-2 spurt, capped by House’s three with 3:57 to go, to build an 85-66 lead.
The victory gave the Paladins a season sweep of their home-and-home versus Mercer and marked Furman’s 20th win in the last 22 meetings versus the Bears. Anderson joined House in connecting on 6/9 threes to post 18 points while Ben Vander Wal scored 12, PJay Smith Jr. had 12 and Garrett Hien added 10. Sophomore Cooper Bowser contributed nine points, six rebounds, five assists, a career-best five blocks and four steals.

Furman shot .492 from the field, including an 18/36 effort from 3-point range, and posted its best free-throw performance in league play, going 16/20. The Paladins’ bench outscored Mercer’s reserves 35-8. For a game, the Paladins cured most of what has ailed them in an erratic SoCon campaign.
The Bears shot .453 and held a 32-20 edge in points in the paint but never led. Ahmad Robinson paced Mercer with 17 points and Tyler Johnson scored 16. Brady Shoulders scored 11 and Alex Holt and Cam Bryant added 10 points apiece.

Furman is back in action at The Well on Saturday for a noon tip-off versus UNC Greensboro.
“This team has been resilient,” said House. “It’s not been a perfect season by any stretch of the imagination, but at the same time, there aren’t a lot of 19-win teams.
“The league is so tough, you can’t even afford to take one possession off. The adversity to this point is going to help us the rest of the way. It’s just making us ready for Asheville.”
Take a look at the stats here.

Furman’s football schedule has a couple fascinating items.
For the first time since 1961, Furman and Clemson will face off in a regular-season finale on Nov. 22. From 1923-42, in 1951, and 1955-61 the two Upstate schools battled in the final game of the regular season. The contest, nowadays a David versus Goliath fray, will mark the 59th meeting in the series.
The Paladins have not closed a season against a major power since 2011, when Bruce Fowler’s 6-5 team closed with a 54-32 loss at Florida.
The second oddity is easy to overlook. The second game, on Sept. 6, is at Paladin Stadium on Sept. 6 against a very different in-state rival, Presbyterian College, which is a member of the Pioneer Football League and doesn’t award football scholarships. Last year Furman played the PFL’s Stetson and won, 48-7. The Hatters were 2-9 and 0-7 in the PFL, an FCS, but non-scholarship, league.
Two years ago, Presbyterian was 4-7 and played Wofford in the third game, upsetting the SoCon rival, 23-20. Later that season, the Terriers stunned the 10-3 Paladins, 18-14.
Oh, surely not. It’s a bit scary, though.

The 12-game slate, split evenly with six home and six away contests, includes eight Southern Conference matchups.
Furman, which is in line to return 14 starters from last season, opened spring practice on Thursday at 6:45 a.m. in Paladin Stadium.
The Paladins kick off the campaign on Aug. 30 when they play host to William & Mary, a former SoCon rival making its first trip to Greenville since 2000. Last year the Tribe edged Furman, 34-24, in Williamsburg.
Furman has won 15 of the last 16 clashes with the Blue Hose and is 13-0 versus PC in Paladin Stadium.
Furman opens its six-game road schedule with a Sept. 13 clash at Campbell in the first football meeting between the Paladins and Camels.
Idle on Sept. 20, the Paladins kick off SoCon play with a Sept. 27 road contest at Samford. The Paladins and Bulldogs had their 2024 contest in Greenville canceled due to the effects of Hurricane Helene that struck the Upstate.

The Paladins will look to extend their winning streak against East Tennessee State to four games when the Buccaneers pay a visit to Greenville on Oct. 4 for a Family Weekend contest. Furman earned a 24-21 win in Johnson City last season.
Road games at Western Carolina (Oct. 11) and Wofford (Oct. 18) are on the schedule for the Paladins, whose last trip to Cullowhee in 2023 resulted in a high stakes, 29-13 Furman victory that propelled the purple and white to a SoCon championship. The Paladins and Terriers own the Deep South’s oldest football rivalry that dates from 1889 and has been contested 98 times.
The SoCon’s most-played football rivalry, owned by Furman and The Citadel, will be renewed for the 105th time on Oct. 25 in Greenville in a contest that will highlight Homecoming Weekend. The Paladins sport a 64-37-3 lead in the series and have won the last four, including a 17-16 verdict earned last season.

November will feature a pair of home clashes versus Mercer (Nov. 1) and VMI (Nov. 15), which will sandwich a road game at Chattanooga (Nov. 8).
Take a look at the schedule here.
Support the advertisers. They are all fine people who want their businesses associated with honest coverage of local sports. I appreciate them sticking with me as I get back up to speed.
I’m getting a little stronger, but I tire easily. Energy remains a problem.
In the off chance you’d like to read my novels and other books, they’re available on Amazon and many prominent bookseller sites.
You can read them on your phones and other devices for a modest cost. I make a bit more if you purchase the actual books, but what I mainly want is for folks to read them.

Illness has left me with some additional expenses. I hope to sell off some memorabilia I’ve accumulated over the years. First I’ve got to get well.
Cowboys Come Home is a novel about a couple of young Texans home from World War II. Texas has changed in their absence.
Thanks for putting up with me.