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| Making his first start since Dec. 18, Cooper Bowser had 18 points and 8 rebounds in Furman's 75-71 overtime loss at ETSU Wednesday. Photo courtesy of Furman |
For the fifth time in the past six games, Furman held a double-digit lead midway through the second half at East Tennessee State Wednesday night. The Paladins fell to 2-3 in those games as the Buccaneers rallied for a 75-71 overtime win to remain alone in first place in the Southern Conference standings.
The Paladins (16-8, 7-4) entered Wednesday going for their fourth consecutive win, which would've pulled them into a tie with ETSU for first in the league. That appeared to be the destination when Furman took a 51-37 lead with 10:20 remaining. But the Bucs responded with a layup drill over the next four-and-a-half minutes to completely wipe out that deficit.
Furman actually blew this big lead quickly enough to have plenty of time to recover and retake the lead before ETSU's Jaylen Smith hit a three with 15 seconds left to force overtime. The Bucs (17-7, 9-2) made each of their first four shots in overtime to take a seven-point lead and held on for the victory. The Paladins suffered 21 turnovers in losing a game in which they shot 52.7 percent from the floor and led for 36:54 of.
"There's a lot of things you can look at and feel like, 'We should've been better here. We should've been better there.' At the end of the day, we've got to make sure their best shooter on the floor doesn't get a wide-open three when we're up three," Furman coach Bob Richey said of the game-tying three in regulation on the Furman Radio Network's postgame show. "That was a freshman breakdown there. They haven't been in this environment. They're not used to it.
"It was a hard fought game. We outrebounded them by seven and it's hard to outrebound a team like (ETSU), but we turned it over way too much. Even with that, I thought we still should've won the game. ... It's a thin margin, the difference between feeling just absolutely crushed and feeling elated. It's the difference of not losing their best shooter on their last possession of (regulation)."
The only time in the last six games that the Paladins didn't have a commanding lead midway through the second half was at UNC Greensboro. Ironically, Furman won that game by 23 points after leading 53-52 with 9:20 remaining. That gutsy win followed gut-punching losses to rivals Wofford and The Citadel in which the Paladins blew second-half leads of 13 and 19 points, respectively. Following the UNCG game, Furman had back-to-back five-point wins. In those two, the Paladins saw a 14-point lead with 11 minutes left cut to two against Samford and an 11-point lead with less than seven minutes left cut to three against Chattanooga. Furman led that game by as many as 24 in the first half and 19 early in the second half.
So when the Paladins took a 35-23 lead into halftime in Johnson City, it marked the second consecutive game in which Furman held the opposition to 23 in the first half but it certainly didn't want to let up in the second half. Coming out of the locker room, it didn't. A Charles Johnston three pushed the lead to 15 early on. It was a return to lob city also for the Paladins as Cooper Bowser made his first start since Dec. 18. His dunk with 11:23 left extended the lead to 11 and made him 8-for-8 from the floor. Unfortunately for Furman, it was his last bucket of the night as he was just 0-for-2 the rest of the way.
After Tom House's layup pushed the lead to 14 with 10:20 left, ETSU just annihilated Furman down low. Over a stretch of 4:05, the Bucs made five consecutive shots - all layups. The last of those was by Blake Barkley and tied the game at 53-53 with 6:01 remaining. The times ETSU didn't get a layup during that 16-2 run, it was fouled on drives to the basket and made 6-of-7 free throws during it.
"We fouled too much in the last 10 minutes and they ended up with 32 points in the paint after having eight in the first half," Richey said. "It was like the Chattanooga game. We played this phenomenal defense in the first half and then just can't sustain it. We've got to figure it out."
Johnston finally stopped the bleeding when he answered Barkley's layup with a three-pointer. The lead changed a couple of times down the stretch of regulation. After Alex Wilkins' layup gave Furman its final lead at 59-57 with three minutes left, he had a turnover and then missed the front end of a 1-and-1. Coming off a 33-point performance against Chattanooga, Wilkins - an 84 percent foul shooter - made 2-of-5 free throws Wednesday.
The next time down, Wilkins tossed a lob to Bowser who was fouled. Bowser, a 60 percent foul shooter, made his only two free throws of the game and Furman led 61-57 with 1:12 left. The Paladins forced a miss, but ETSU got the offensive rebound and Cam Morris drew Johnston's fourth foul. Morris hit just 1-of-2 free throws to cut the lead to three. On Furman's ensuing possession, Cole Bowser had the ball as the shot clock was in the final seconds. He drew a second defender and tried to hit his open brother down low with a bounce pass, but the Bucs deflected it and Barkley came up with the steal. Smith then drilled the game-tying three from the top of the key.
"We're up three and I thought we had the two-on-one right there and I thought we were going to throw it up to Coop right there," Richey said. "Unfortunately, we threw it down and turned it over."
After Smith's three, Furman called timeout. With 15 seconds left, the Paladins had plenty of time left for a potential game-winning shot but haven't had the best end-of-half possessions of late. That trend continued when Wilkins suffered his 11th turnover of the game on what was to be another lob to Cooper Bowser. Seeing as how there was about 1.5 seconds left when he lost control of it, I'm not sure there would've been time for a catch and dunk.
"It was the same play we ran for Coop when he was fouled (late in regulation)," Richey said. "We had the two-on-one, I thought we were going to make the play and win it but unfortunately, the ball came out."
"We've got to learn to do the things that are critical to close out games. We've got three overtime losses and we've had second-half leads in all three - two of them double digits in the second half. We're just not closing games like we need to. ... Our youth is having to learn the hard way. It's a little painful because we're playing some really good ball for a decent amount of the games."
ETSU's Brian Taylor opened overtime with a three, before Cole Bowser answered with a three. After Morris made a layup, Bowser missed a three and Smith drained another three. Morris then came up with a steal off a Johnston turnover and his layup pushed the Bucs lead to 71-64 with 2:48 left. After layups by Wilkins and Ben Vander Wal, Vander Wal made 1-of-2 free throws with 32 seconds left to cut the lead to 71-69 but Furman couldn't get any closer. Barkley and Smith each made a pair of free throws in the final 24 seconds to seal ETSU's victory.
In addition to the turnover issue was the lack of steals on the other end. Furman had just one steal while the Bucs had 13. That led to an 18-2 advantage in fast break points for ETSU, who also had an 19-3 edge in bench scoring. Three points from the bench in an overtime game in which Johnston and Vander Wal both fouled out of is a tough factor to overcome. While the teams were nearly even on fouls, calls on the Paladins were more costly as they went 6-of-10 from the foul line while the Bucs made 16-of-22.
Wilkins had a game-high 19 points for Furman, while Cooper Bowser finished with 18 points and eight rebounds. House had 11 points and a game-high four assists, while Johnston also scored 11 and had a game-high two blocks. Vander Wal had nine points and eight rebounds and a team-high plus-eight in the plus-minu column.
Now for a glass half-full perspective. Furman has faced every SoCon team, but has yet to play a conference game with all of its key players healthy. The Paladins have had at least a 13-point lead in eight of their last nine games. The only game they didn't in that stretch was a four-point win at Samford in which they led by as much as nine in the second half. In the first two conference games this season, Furman's biggest lead was by nine in a win over Mercer but only two in a three-point overtime loss to Western Carolina.
So this team has shown flashes of being able to play extremely well against all but one team in this league thus far. As injured guys return to the mix, you'd think those flashes should grow longer and large leads should become more sustainable.
One of those key injured guys is Asa Thomas, who's expected to return to action Sunday when Furman hosts UNCG at 1 p.m. Thomas, a Clemson transfer who's averaging 13.2 points per game and shooting 40.5 percent from three this season, hasn't played since Jan. 10. Sunday's game will be televised by ESPN2.
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