By MONTE DUTTON
Furman and Western Carolina played so hard on Saturday that the crowd was sweating … and crying tears of joy when J.P. Pegues buried Western Carolina with a pristine triple with 0.8 seconds on the clock, 65-62.
Pegues hit it, but everyone wearing gray uniforms knew it was going in. Pegues is a Nashville cat. Plays clean as country wahterrrr.
Oh, Timmons Arena was bouncing boards as the Paladins and Catamounts conducted a five-on-five prize fight in front of 2,517 fortunate souls.
It was a Southern Conference basketball classic that inspired grown men to make up words.
Fantabulous. Splendiferous. Excitaddictive.
Damn, it was a great game. As the seconds blinked down on the omniscient megaboards, I thought to myself, I’m a Furman man, but, I swear, if the Paladins lose, I’m still going to enjoy it.
I lied.
At least the folks from Cullowhee rode back knowing their lads had been beaten by a ball team. It took one.
“This is what college basketball is,” said Furman head coach Bob Richey. “How you build a program and see their players, and how good they are and their staff. The last two times we’ve played, we’ve made one more shot, both times, but it’s been blow for blow, hit for hit. It’s just teams that really put everything on the line, and you go out there and get a win.”
Pegues’ orange sphere arched through the darkened air above the arena, one side in shadow, rotating, and the sound of its splash could be heard for just a split second before the place exploded.
Richey said he drew up a play and thought better of it. He just turned the game over to the man he knew wanted the ball in his hands.
Of course.
“I feel like the coaching staff and the players on this team, they all trust me in that moment,” Pegues said. “And I feel like that’s built up trust over the course of this season. They wanted me to have that last shot. I feel thanks to them for putting that confidence in me.”
They were right.
“I kind of, really, like, crave, and feel those moments and stuff like that,” he added later.
Pegues has done it before, most famously on that day in Orlando that still dances in purple-tinged dreams. He also hit one at a crisp 0.8 earlier this season at Tulane, only to see the world’s fastest foul called on the world’s fastest desperation shot, leading to three slightly less earth-shattering free throws and, eventually, a double-overtime loss.
That, however, was in the dark time, when Marcus Foster was out and Alex Williams and Pegues himself were about to be.
“Sometimes hard can feel like it’s caving in on you a little bit,” Richey said. “Now this team’s gone four in a row.”
It’s a wonder no one was hospitalized Saturday. Some of the better players in the Southern Conference – Western Carolina’s superb Vonterius Woolbright, Foster, Pegues, Williams, Tyrese Hughey – took frightful spills. Hughey sat out the rest of the game, apparently with nothing more serious than a rolled ankle.
Woolbright led Western Carolina with 27 points, 16 rebounds and six assists. D.J. Campbell connected on 5/10 shots to add 11. The Catamounts were held to .400 shooting and a season-low 62 points by the Paladin defense that recorded 10 steals, four by Carter Whitt.
It wasn’t a brawl. It was fine teams playing as hard as the times in Gaza.
Richey thought it the Paladins’ best defensive game to date.
A fourth consecutive allowed Furman (10-9, 4-2 SoCon) to track down Western Carolina (15-4, 4-2), a team it trailed by two games a week ago. The team Furman still trails by two, Samford, is bringing a 17-game win streak to Timmons on Wednesday night at 7. The Paladins play at Wofford, now tied with Western Carolina and Furman at 4-2, next Saturday. Those three, plus Chattanooga, trail Samford by two games and UNC Greensboro by one.
Trailing 36-26 at the half, Western Carolina opened the second period on a 13-2 run to retake the lead. Furman missed nine consecutive shots and went just 2/16 from the floor from the 19:17 mark until the 9:40 mark of the second half as the Catamounts built a 53-48 margin.
“It was kind of tough that J.P. went out (with cramps), and then we had Tyrese (Hughey) go down. The flow of our offense got stagnant,” Foster said. “We had to get back to what we do as a team and play within our offense.
“We lost that for a little bit, and they were scoring too easily. We got away from the things we do, and the coaches had to get us recentered and refocused.”
Down 55-51 with under five minutes to play, Williams scored in the paint to cut the deficit in half. Two possessions later, Williams snagged an offensive rebound off a Foster miss and scored on the putback to even the contest with 3:22 to go. After a pair of free throws restored the Catamount advantage, Foster drained a three from the left corner to give the Paladins their first lead since the 13-minute mark.
Furman and Western Carolina traded baskets on the next possession with Woolbright scoring in the paint for the Catamounts and Pegues answering with a drive down the lane. Foster knocked the ball away from Woolbright in the paint on Western Carolina’s next possession and Pegues converted another layup to extend the Furman lead to 62-59 with 39 seconds left.
D.J. Campbell responded for WCU as Woolbright drew the defense and passed to the guard for a game-tying triple from the right wing with 17 seconds remaining.
Following a Catamount timeout, Furman cleared out for Pegues to take his defender one-on-one . He created space with a jab-step before burying the game-winning three. Western Carolina’s long pass was tipped away by PJay Smith, and a horn never sounded so pleasant.
Pegues finished with 17 points, on 6/12 shooting, and disseminated four assists. Foster scored 14 points and grabbed nine rebounds while Williams recorded the first double-double of his career with 13 points and 11 boards.
The Paladins shot just .413 but connected on 7/19 three-point attempts and hit their last four shots of the game. Each team grabbed 40 rebounds and tallied 36 points in the paint. Furman amassed 12 offensive rebounds for the 10th time in the last 11 contests to fashion a 14-8 edge in second-chance points.
The Paladins ended the first half with a 23-9 run.
It was the 10th consecutive triumph over the Catamounts at Timmons Arena and Furman’s 16th win in the last 17 meetings overall.
As the old timers say, it was a stomp-down good’un.
Take a look at the stats here.
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