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| PJay Smith has led Furman to a 12-1 start this season. Photo courtesy of Furman |
Coming off its winningest non-conference portion of a schedule ever, the Furman men's basketball team is set to open 2025 and Southern Conference play Wednesday at Western Carolina at 1 p.m. The Paladins are taking a five-game winning streak, a No. 7 ranking in the Mid-Major poll and a 12-1 overall record into Cullowhee. That's the most wins Furman has posted in non-conference play since joining the SoCon 88 years ago.
It's the fifth time that the Paladins have had a 12-1 start to a season and the second since 1978-79. The 2018-19 team started 12-0 before suffering back-to-back losses to close out December that season. Furman has enjoyed success this season by playing as a team in all aspects of the game. Eleven different Paladins have scored in double figures in a game at least once this season.
"All I want them to continue to do is go out there and play with a chip on the shoulder that got us to where we are right now. ... Go out there and continue to be a connected team that cares about one another and doesn't care who gets the glory, but just goes out and finds a way to win games," Furman coach Bob Richey said on the Furman Radio Network's postgame show after the Paladins' 77-63 win at Harvard on Dec. 21.
"This team needs to be celebrated. We lost nearly one million in NIL money off last year's team and everybody counted us out. This group has abided in the values that we built all this on ... and it's just continued to be 'find a way' Furman."
While teamwork has been a huge key this season, it's helped that PJay Smith has been an absolute stud. Smith has persevered through a couple of different injuries to have a SoCon Player of the Year type of season thus far. In the SoCon, Smith ranks second in scoring (17.3 points per game), fifth in field goal percentage (51.6), fifth in assists (3.7 per game), sixth in steals (1.64 per game), first in three-point percentage (50.6) and first in three-pointers made (41-of-81) and sixth in assist-to-turnover ratio (1.95).
Smith's latest effort may have been his best of the season and led to his third SoCon Player of the Week honor. In the win at Harvard, Smith had 25 points (on 8-of-11 shooting), seven rebounds, five assists, two steals and a block. He also held Harvard leading scorer Robert Hinton to four points on 2-of-9 shooting. Smith did all that in his first game back after dislocating his shoulder in Furman's win over South Carolina State just one week earlier.
"I've coached some tough guys - Matt Rafferty, Alex Hunter, Andrew Brown. Guys that are just as tough as they get and (Smith) is right on that list," Richey said afterwards. "Early in the week, it didn't look like he was going to be able to play in this game ... but he made it known pretty quickly that he was going to play today. ... He wanted to be in the game and man, was he in it.
"There's going to be a lot of talk about PJay scoring 25 points, but the bigger story is that he held their best player - who's 6-foot-5, so he's giving up height - to four points."
On the other end of the floor from those offensive numbers, Smith would likely be considered the best defender on a team that's thrived on defense. Furman ranks second in the SoCon in scoring defense (63.8 points per game allowed) and field goal percentage defense (39.8), and second in the country in three-point percentage defense (25.3).
Furman has been particularly stingy defensively while closing out games. Here's a list of some opponents' field goal shooting numbers to end games:
- Nov. 20: Oglethorpe - 1-for-11 over the final 5:56
- Nov. 23: at Charleston Southern - 2-for-11 over the final 9:03
- Nov. 26: Seattle (in Las Vegas) - 0-for-7 over the final 4:29
- Dec. 4: at Florida Gulf Coast - 3-for-9 over the final 9:32
- Dec. 7: Princeton - 2-for-12 over the final 9:50
- Dec. 21: at Harvard - 2-for-12 over the final 7:07
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