By MONTE DUTTON

This morning brings confusion, upon awakening, over where I am.

I’m in Johnson City, Tenn., writing about Asheville, N.C. I really wish I were still in Asheville, where in a little over an hour, the Furman University women’s basketball team – which is seeded higher than the men – is playing Chattanooga. I returned here last night because the Presbyterian College men are playing Radford tonight.

On Saturday – that’s tomorrow, right? – I’m going back to Asheville for the duration. If PC falls tonight, and FU falls tomorrow night, I’m going to take photographs of scenic mountain scenery.

On Thursday, inside Harrah’s Cherokee Center, I opened a refrigerated unit and grabbed a Diet Coke. A man I have never seen before and might never see again, stopped me.

“You’d be better off if you’d just grab a regular Coke,” he said. “That’s what a doctor told me.”

“Thanks,” I replied, “but I’ll take my chances.”

“Diet drinks give you Alzheimer’s.”

I really was just trying to be polite, but I was mildly concerned that the man was going to try to take the Diet Coke away from me.

“I read that plastic bottles give you Alzheimer’s,” I said. “Nothing I can do about it. All those microplastics from a lifetime are just, uh, circulating. Life’s fatal, man.”

The fellow finally gave up on saving me.

“I tell you one thing, though, buddy. Cigarettes’ll give you cancer,” he said, perhaps seeking common ground.

“Agreed,” I said. “No doubt. Thank goodness they don’t allow none of that around here no more.”

I reckon everybody these days is a crusader about something. I have been known to extol the virtues of reading to strangers. Okay, not reading to strangers. Suggesting to strangers they should read. Self-preservation plays a role, but’s it’s a lost cause. I keep on writing anyway. It’s all I know.

All the games in Asheville were close, except the one in which I was deeply interested.

Sometimes things don’t work out. Half-baked theories are most often invalid.

In the fourth quarter of Thursday’s Samford-Wofford women’s game, the western Bulldogs hit 3/13 shots from the field and missed all five of their three-point attempts. My theory was the cumulative effect of the day-glow pink shirts being worn by Terriers head coach Jimmy Garrity (or was it Garishly?) and his assistants was driving Samford mad.

The shirts had a perfectly good and admirable reason to be there. Several lives in the Wofford program have been touched by breast cancer, and it was all for good awareness to raise.

Nah. The shirts didn’t even give me sunspots, and while Wofford (16-13) lapped up most of a third-quarter deficit of eight points, Samford (14-18) held on to win, 59-57.

More good news. At the Ingles SoCon Championships, the cheerleaders always run relay races during an early timeout. It was a one-point game at the end of the first quarter, but the Paladin lovelies ran away with the relay race. The best cheerleader relay racers are the ones who look like they ran track in high school. The worst are those who look like they ran sororities.

Lost amid all this frivolity was the game going on. It was neck-and-neck, hand to hand, out there on the Harrah’s Cherokee hardwood. Halftime score: 29-29.

That changed dramatically. The Paladins warmed in the third quarter. The fourth was a deluge.

Alyssa Ervin poured in 27 points and Furman (18-12) played stifling second-half defense to defeat No. 5 seed Mercer, 66-45.

“We went through a rough stretch in the second half of the conference season,” said Furman head coach Pierre Curtis. “We made it a point to get back to the basics of what we were and who we are.

“We had all the right intentions in the first half. We just didn’t make shots and overthrew some passes.”

The victory pushed Furman into Friday’s, 11 a.m. semifinal versus No. 1 seed Chattanooga (19-8), which knocked off Western Carolina 66-47.
 Ervin hit 8/15 shots, including 4/7 3-pointers, and 7/8 free throws for a career high, which topped the 24 points she tallied in a 69-56 win over UNC Greensboro in Greenville on Jan. 15. The Galax, Va., native and second team All-SoCon performer combined her big scoring effort with six rebounds, five steals, and three assists in 38 minutes.
It was the highest scoring performance by a Furman player in the tournament since Rushia Brown scored 37 in a 77-73 win over Appalachian State in 1994.
The Paladin defense limited the Bears to just .208 (5/24) shooting in the second half.
Limited to only 25 minutes of action due to foul trouble, Clare Coyle joined Ervin in double figures with 10 points and claimed a team-high eight rebounds, helping Furman to 38-28 advantage on the boards.
The Paladins’ defense forced 21 Mercer turnovers.

Take a look at the stats here.

Chattanooga pulled 10 points ahead after two quarters back in Asheville. Maybe my scheduling wasn’t so bad after all.

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Most of my books are available at Amazon. Two of my novels, Cowboys Come Home and Lightning in a Bottle, are available in audio versions.