JOHNSON CITY, Tenn. — It was a game that had everything you could want in a college basketball game…physical play, toughness, dunks, blocks, crowd excitement and a palpable energy gave it the feeling of a big-time matchup from start-to-finish.
Despite not having the lead for 36 minutes, East Tennessee State took a page out of Furman’s book over the past couple of seasons, in that it found a way to overcome a 15-point deficit in the second half, including a 14-point deficit (51-37) with 10:20 remaining
to take is first lead (57-56) with 3:58 remaining. It eventually forced overtime tied at 61 in front of a boisterous home crowd of ready to explode at a moment’s notice.
With the game in overtime, ETSU found its second wind and a bit of composure as it seized upon its killer instinct at home, which has witnessed 140 wins over the past 11 seasons. The Bucs used a 10-3 spurt to take a 71-64 lead with 2:46 left in the extra session before holding on for a 75-71 Southern Conference win before 4,072 fans packed inside Freedom Hall.
With the win, the Bucs strengthened their hold on the top spot in the Southern Conference, improving to 17-7 overall and 9-2 in Southern Conference play, while the Paladins fell to 16-8 overall and 7-4 in SoCon action. ETSU’s four-point win over the Paladins evened the all-time series, 36-36, and marked the Bucs’ first OT win of the season, while the ’Dins fell to 0-3 in overtime games with all three of those OT setbacks coming in Southern Conference play.
The Bucs ended up being led by four players in double figures. It was another strong performance from Blake Barkley, who finished with 15 points, four rebounds, three assists and two steals. Barkley finished the evening connecting on 4-of-13 shots from the field and was 7-for-8 from the charity stripe.
Barkley was joined in double figures by Jordan McCullum, who continued his strong play of late by posting 14 points, three rebounds and three steals. Brian Taylor II added 14 points, three rebounds and three steals. Jaylen Smith came off the bench to add 13 points and two assists, finishing a perfect 3-for-3 from long range and was 4-for-6 from the field and 2-for-2 from the line.
The Bucs finished the night connecting on 43.3% (26-of-60) for the game, which included a 41.2% (7-of-17) effort from 3-point land and were once again solid from the charity stripe, finishing 72.1% (16-of-22) from the line. The Paladins used shut-down defense and offensive efficiency to power their way to a 12-point halftime lead, at 35-23.
However, ETSU turned up the defensive intensity in the second half and overtime as the Paladins recorded their third 20-turnover outing of the season, as the Bucs converted those 21 Furman miscues into a 23-8 advantage in points off turnovers. The 20 turnovers also led to the 18-2 edge in fast-break scoring in favor of the Bucs.
It was just the ninth time in 286 games under head coach Bob Richey that the Paladins have committed that many turnovers, falling to 3-6 in such games over the past nine seasons. Furman is 1-2 this season when turning it over 20 or more times in a game. It turned the ball over 22 times in the season-opening 97-71 loss to High Point and committed 20 turnovers last month in a 69-48 SoCon win over VMI.
The Bucs were like a deadly viper when the Paladins committed miscues, and they finished with 15 of their 38 second-half points off Furman turnovers. The Bucs recorded 13 steals against the Paladins, which was only bested by VMI’s 16 against the Paladins at Timmons Arena back in early January.
Some of that was the Bucs turning up the screws defensively, while the other part of the equation was Furman doing what most everyone said they absolutely couldn’t come into the game, and that is be careless with the basketball.
As good as Furman played for much of the night, which was good enough to lead for 36 minutes in regulation and would have been an effort that would win most nights with a few fewer miscues, wasn’t ever going to be a recipe for success for the Paladins against an ETSU team that converts opponents’ mistakes into points the other way with lethal efficiency.
Unfortunately, most will look at Furman’s freshman point guard Alex Wilkins, who at times left fans in awe with his ability, but at other times, he showed he still has a lot to clean up in his game before he can realize his full star potential. Right now, he’s just focused on helping lead Furman to a championship in March and a trip back to the NCAA Tournament for the second time in four years.
Wilkins posted a solid 8-of-14 shooting effort from the field but finished with 11 turnovers, with some of it due to ETSU’s defense, while other times, he was just carelessness with the ball. All in all though, Wilkins’ performance wasn’t terrible and some of the shots he made were phenomenal.
There are a number of areas too numerous to count in which the young guard continues to excel, however. The good news is, for Wilkins and Furman is that both haven’t reached their zenith this season. The bad news is that both are running out of season to tidy things up and find synchronicity before the SoCon Tournament in Asheville at the beginning of next month.
Wilkins’ 19-point effort was just shy of his 12th 20-point effort of the season, while he finished the night by posting his 21st double-figure scoring effort in 24 games as a freshman. The rookie from Mattapan, Mass., finished just 1-for-5 from 3-point land, but was efficient shooting inside the arc, finishing 8-of-9 from 2-point range. He also finished the contest going 2-of-5 from the line. His two assists matched a season low, which he also had in the season-opening loss to High Point and in a lopsided win over Columbia International.
Cooper Bowser was an absolute monster in the paint all evening, finishing with 18 points on 8-of-10 shooting from the field. He added eight boards, two assists and blocked a shot.
Charles Johnston and Tom House added 11 points apiece, while Ben Vander Wal played one of his best games of the season on both ends of the floor before fouling out late in overtime. He finished with nine points, eight rebounds and garnered a team-high +8 in the +/- category.
Furman finished the contest connecting on 52.7% (29-of-55), including 26.9% (7-of-26) from 3-point range, while connecting on 60% (6-of-10) from the free throw line. In total, Furman finished the night holding a lead for 36:54 of the game, while the Bucs held the lead for 4:32 of the 45 minutes of basketball.
Types of “toughness” and psychological warfare
As a whole though, the game featured some of the best efficiency on offense and most staunch defense played in the league this season, but it came down to ETSU’s maturity with the ball and defensive intensity. Furman did what it has developed a nasty habit of doing: letting teams back into the games late. The culprit Wednesday night was live-ball turnovers.
The Paladins suffered their third loss when leading with five or fewer minutes remaining, with all three of those losses coming in a 19-day span (Wofford, The Citadel and ETSU). Furman falls to 15-3 when leading with five minutes or less remaining in a game, squandering double-digit leads in all three losses.
The win for the Bucs was a stark contrast to its outing last Thursday night at Freedom Hall, which was a 90-88 home loss to another team wearing purple — the Western Carolina Catamounts. Rare were losses at home to SoCon teams. Rarer are consecutive losses at home to SoCon teams.
Furman has surrendered double-digit, second-half leads in three of its four Southern Conference losses. The Paladins blew a 13-point second-half lead in a 74-70 loss to Wofford, a 19-point second-half lead to The Citadel to lose 77-75 in overtime, and the latest edition involved blowing as much as a 15-point second half lead, including a 14-margin over the final 10:20 of the game in the 75-71 setback to ETSU.
The comeback had layers, with some of it having to do with ETSU continuing to fight and not give in, while another layer was also Furman’s self-inflicted implosion, which included six crucial turnovers down the stretch.
With ETSU playing its best defense of the night, the pressure overwhelmed the younger Paladins, and once the crowd got involved, the mountain of momentum shifted the energy to a degree to which Furman could never regain it the rest of the night. As good as Furman has been to win 41 games over the past two seasons and doing it the in the “Find a Way Furman Fashion,” there has been instances where this nasty habit of blowing leads late in games crept in even last season as the Paladins blew double-digit leads in both halves vs. Chattanooga in a home loss in Greenville (75-71) last season. They then faltered down the stretch in late-game situations in a road loss at ETSU, in which the Paladins held a 67-60 lead with about three minutes remaining only to lose 72-69. The Bucs closed that contest with a 12-2 run at Freedom Hall.
However, the ultimate collapse for Richey’s team came in the 2025 SoCon Championship game in the cruelest of fashions, as the Paladins were seemingly on the brink of another trip to March Madness. They held an 83-79 lead over Wofford with 2:34 remaining but was outscored 13-2 the rest of the way to lose 92-85.
Lately, it seems the Paladins have fallen time and time again into that dreaded mental comfort zone. After all, both teams want to win the game. The difference is one team is just playing to run out time to the inevitable result and relief, while the focus of the opposing team playing from behind is of one mind — never give up. With both teams living in different mindsets chasing the same goal of ultimate victory. One is we’ve got it won, while the other lives in a world with an altered state of achieving a chasing a goal until the job is finished rather than living in a world of foregone conclusions.
Basketball has a joy and cruelty about it maybe more than any other sport in this way. Leads can multiply and evaporate so fast in this sport that the mind struggles to keep up with the changes in momentum, catching you unaware and by the time you realize the other team is coming back and taking control of the game, you’ve already lost the battle before you’ve even lost the actual lead on the scoreboard.
The win brought sheer joy in the comeback for ETSU, while Furman ended up wearing the badge of harshness and cruelty of surrendering a late-game lead for a third time in two weeks. The juxtaposition of it all could be seen in the smile of Smith and the anguish of Wilkins, as he practiced a couple of free throws and spoke to some young Bucs fans afterwards. ETSU showed that toughness and grit late in a game that we have at times questioned in some of their road losses this season, which include setbacks at both Presbyterian and Austin Peay and at home against Western Carolina.
Those losses for ETSU did not kill them, but in fact, the cumulative effect produced a stronger version of the Bucs, which was revealed right before our eyes in Freedom Hall on the first Wednesday in February.
It was a rare game that sees ETSU beaten in most of the “toughness stats” in basketball that the most of the time “uninformed media” (I count myself in this demographic every once and awhile) as we judge a game on and which team “whipped” the other because they were tougher.
But those are the physical attributes of a matchup. For instance, Furman claimed statistical advantages in total rebounds (36-29), points in the paint (36-32), and second-chance points (6-5). It’s rare to ever see an ETSU team ever lose one of those statistical categories this season, much less all three, and if they do, more often than not it turns into an “L.”
The Bucs might not have won some of the “physically toughness stat categories,” but they were the mentally tougher team and more mature team down the stretch, and that made as much or even more of a difference as some of those statistical categories they almost always dominate against conference foes.
In last week’s 90-88 loss to Western Carolina on its home floor for instance, the Bucs lost similar battles. The Catamounts won the battle of the boards (34-28), points in the paint (36-30) and second-chance points (14-9). They ended up winning the game, mostly because ETSU had a hard time stringing together stops down the stretch, and they couldn’t fluster the Catamounts as much as the Bucs would have hoped down the stretch of the game. WCU turned the ball over 10 fewer times than the Paladins, which yielded a much more respectable margin in the points from turnovers category (13-9).
Big game feel
The game had a great “buzz” about it, and for the first time this season, from my perspective, it felt like a game with a lot on the line in terms of the energy flowing throughout the building from tip-to-buzzer. The game was reminiscent of some of those SoCon battles back in the 2018-19 or 2019-20 seasons when Steve Forbes roamed the Freedom Hall sidelines, with trusted and savvy assistant Brooks Savage (see what I did there haha) in-tow for analytical and coaching support.
Savage — the one-time savvy assistant turned really good head coach although never losing the “savviness” — has the Bucs’ winning culture back to the point where they can compete for championships on an annual basis. Furman has been at that point as long as Richey has been the head coach, and the Paladins have been tried and true at or near the top of the SoCon over the past decade more often than not. After all, Furman has 239 wins over the past 11 seasons, including 197 victories under Richey in his nines season at the helm.
For ETSU, it’s been an absolute battle to get back to sustainability at the top of the SoCon. The tradition never left, nor did the standard of excellence, and that was key along the way. You never get far when talking to folks from ETSU that somewhere along the way, the topic of Bucs basketball starts up somewhere near Keith “Mister” Jennings and ends up around Forbes.
The time is now it seems for ETSU, and Savage has given the team reason to believe maybe some of that sustained success is returning to the program and something it can trust and hold tightly to once again. That’s something that, for the first time in a long time, that was lost for at least three seasons under Savage’s predecessors (Des Oliver and Jason Shay).
With Wednesday night’s win over Furman, Savage now has 55 wins in three seasons and counting. He needs just three more for his most as a head coach in a single-season and would also chart ETSU’s first 20-win campaign since Forbes left following the 2019-20 season.
I wouldn’t be shocked to see ETSU and Furman locking horns in Asheville again. Whether or not these indeed prove to be the two best teams remains to be seen, but all signs point to this potentially being a preview of the championship game in early March at the Harrah’s Cherokee Center.
How it happened
Furman essentially owned the game in the opening half of play, and it was easy to see why Bowser’s return was so vital to the overall success of Furman’s basketball team. In the opening half of play, Bowser was a force, whether catching alley-oop dunks, affecting shots at the rim, or on the boards, he was a problem in multiple areas. Bowser scored eight of his 18 points in the opening 20 minutes of basketball, while also snagging three boards, blocking a shot and recording an assist in helping lead Furman to a 35-23 halftime advantage.
Bowser’s high-flying dunks both from lobs and on his own, were a big part of why the Paladins played one of their best halves of complimentary basketball of the season. Furman went into the locker room shooting 62.5% (15-of-24) from the field and a 36.4% (4-of-11) effort from 3-point range.
The Paladins, meanwhile, limited the Bucs to just 32.1% (9-for-28) from the field, but Furman’s one main failure on the defensive end most of the night was closing out on ETSU’s perimeter threats. In the first half in particular, that was able to keep ETSU in the contest as the Blue and Gold shot 44.4% (4-of-9) from long-range in the opening 20 minutes and 41.4% (7-of-17) for the game.
In the second half, the Paladins continued their strong play and grew their lead to as many as 15 in the second half when a Charles Johnston three from the right wing gave Furman a 42-27 lead with 16:49 remaining.
The Paladins maintained a healthy lead over the next six minutes, with ETSU able to get no closer than seven points. A House layup high off the glass gave the Paladins a 51-37 lead at the 10:20 mark of the second half.
Then Barkley had seen enough. He scored eight of his team-high 15 points during an 18-2 run by the Bucs, which he personally tied the game at 53 with 6:01 remaining. Two minutes later, Smith found himself open at the free throw line and knocked down a short jumper to give ETSU its first lead of the evening, at 57-56, with four minutes remaining.
Over the next 56 seconds, the Paladins got a free throw and a layup from Wilkins to retake the lead, at 59-57, with 3:04 remaining. Furman had a chance to grow its lead even more, thanks to back-to-back blocks from Johnston, however, the Paladins could only muster two made free throws from Bowser over nearly a two-minute span, assuming a 61-57 lead with 1:12 remaining.
The Bucs, who saw Cam Morris III struggle most of the night until coming on late in the second half, would get a free throw following a second-chance opportunity and foul by Johnston with 57 seconds left. His 1-of-2 effort at the line got the Bucs back to within a possession at 61-58.
From there, ETSU forced a Bowser turnover as Barkley came up with the steal, and the ball eventually found its way to Smith for a rainmaker three from the top of the key, tying the game at 61 with 15 seconds left and whipping the crowd into a wild frenzy.
Furman took a timeout to set up a final play. As Wilkins dribbled off the left side and back towards the center to set up what appeared to be a lob play to Bowser, who was open for a split-second, Smith came in to poke the ball free from behind from Wilkins and the ball floated up harmlessly into the air as the final buzzer sounded. More basketball to be played.
The Bucs took initiative using a 10-3 spurt to start the extra session, as Taylor II and Bowser exchanged threes to tie the game, 64-64, in the opening 30 seconds before ETSU made two layups from Morris sandwiched by what essentially was a dagger three by Smith, which eventually gave the Bucs a 71-64 lead with 2:46 remaining.
Furman wouldn’t go away easily, however, getting five-straight points on layups by Wilkins and Vander Wal and a free throw by Vander Wal to pull within 71-69 with 32 seconds left. However, Barkley and Smith went 4-for-4 from the line to push the lead back to six before Wilkins closed the game with a one-handed tomahawk slam and set the final margin at four, as the Bucs held on for the 75-71 win.
Furman returns to action on Sunday when it welcomes UNC Greensboro (9-15, 5-6 SoCon) to Timmons Arena for a 1 p.m. EST tip-off slated for ESPN2. The Paladins bested the Spartans, 89-66, back on Jan. 23 at Bodford Arena. ETSU will be in action against VMI (6-18, 1-10 SoCon), as the Bucs go for the season sweep of the Keydets in Lexington, Va., at Cameron Hall, having knocked them off 81-67 in Johnson City back on Jan. 7. Tip-off for that contest is set for 1 p.m. on Saturday.
