By MONTE DUTTON

Furman University and Presbyterian College have a mild little rivalry. They’re less than an hour away from each other, and it seems as if the bigger the sport, they less they play. In short, they play only occasionally in football and basketball, and they never play in baseball because Furman no longer fields a team.

PC does all right. Two years ago, the Blue Hose shocked Wofford, a bona fide Furman rival. Later that season, the Terriers stunned a Furman team then ranked in the FCS top five. A PC fan asked me if it was Furman’s most humiliating loss since the Blue Hose defeated the Paladins in 2014.

I said no because that 10-7 PC win took place when the Blue Hose still gave football scholarships.

Which brings us to Saturday, when the 1-0 Paladins face the 1-0 Blue Hose at Paladin Stadium in Greenville. Kickoff is 2 p.m. It’s Furman’s second home game and Presbyterian’s second on the road.

What ups the ante is that Presbyterian just pulled off an upset even bigger than its win over the Terriers in 2023. In Macon, Ga., the Blue Hose set the Southern Conference on its ear by defeating Mercer, 15-10. The Bears won the SoCon last year and were the preseason pick this season. PC is the only Pioneer Football League member that has ever defeated a SoCon team, and now the Blue Hose have done it twice.

“I think our guys came out confident,” head coach Steve Englehart said on Tuesday.

Furman also won, 23-21, over William & Mary on Saturday. Kicker Ian Williams kicked three field goals – 50 yards, 42 and 32 – in the second half. It was a stirring beginning for a program that slumped to 3-8 in 2024 after consecutive 10-win seasons.

William & Mary had beaten Furman, 34-24, in 2024. Mercer had beaten Presbyterian, 63-10. The Paladins were impressive, but the Blue Hose were miraculous, even though nothing about the upset was a miracle. PC outgained the Bears by 75 yards (461-241).

“They looked at last year and obviously felt like they didn’t play very well at Mercer,” Englehart added. “We just battled. Our defense just played extremely well. We learned a lot about ourselves.

“Our tackling was superb. We were physical. We took a lot of chances. We executed a fake point. We executed a flea flicker (Collin Hurst to Nathan Levicki for 29 yards on fourth-and-two). We played all our chips because we knew we had to do some things different in order to win.”

So away we go. Does Furman continue its resurgence? Does Presbyterian strike lightning again? Dating back to 2024, the Blue Hose have won five straight games.

How Presbyterian College reached this point is quite a tale. When the school first joined NCAA Division I, in 2007-08, it joined the Big South Conference, where victories were few and far between. The last time the Blue Hose defeated Furman, 2014, was the season of its only winning season in the Big South. After the 2016 season, PC dropped football scholarships and began a transition to the PFL, a nationwide conference. During COVID, the Blue Hose went 4-3 in the spring of 2021, which somehow didn’t save the job of head coach Tommy Spangler, who took his final team on a bus to Des Moines, Iowa, where it defeated Drake. Athletics director Rob Acunto fired Spangler on his return.

Spangler now coaches defensive backs and special teams at Furman. His kicker, Williams, is the Stats Perform National Specialist of the Week in FCS. In addition to three field goals, Williams averaged 46.7 yards a punt against William & Mary.

Acunto, now deputy athletics director at Fresno (Calif.) State, replaced Spangler with a disastrous, radical hire. Kevin Kelley, a highly successful Arkansas high-school coach, won his first two games in the fall of 2021 and never came close to winning another. Kelley left at the end of the season and most of his team left with him.

Then PC caught an unbelievable break. Englehart lost his team when Florida Tech dropped football after COVID. When he arrived in Clinton, PC barely had enough warm bodies to hold spring practice. His first team went 1-10 in 2022, followed by 4-7 in ’23 and 6-6 last year.

Englehart addresses the Laurens County Touchdown Club in its second meeting every year. He’ll be on the dais Thursday at noon at The Ridge in Laurens. Admission is $15. He has quite a story to tell this year. If Englehart pulls off another upset on Saturday, a legend will grow.

Clinton High senior linebacker Jaydon Glenn is the TD Club’s Player of the Week. In the Red Devils’ 50-0 victory over Laurens, Glenn set up a touchdown with a 49-yard interception return and had four tackles (one for loss) and two quarterback “hurries.”

“Jaydon has really worked hard on and off the field and has become a leader on our defensive unit. He has embraced his transition from defensive end back to linebacker,” said his head coach, Corey Fountain.
Clinton defeated Laurens by a combined total of 96-0 in the two football games last week. The junior varsity score was 46-0.

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