Selection Sunday Special: Recapping Furman's 2026 Title
The Dins are Dancing!
Your Furman Paladins are still the 2026 SoCon Champions! They’ll be looking to make another March memory and maybe, just maybe, bust some more brackets. After a week of celebration, it’s always fun to look back on the three day journey that got Furman into the Big Dance.
Quarterfinals: Furman 86 - Samford 81
Some may not have been excited for a matchup with the Bulldogs who were one of the hottest teams coming into the tournament. Though Furman had already swept Samford, they came into the game winners of 9 of their last 10. On top of that Jadin Booth, the SoCon Player of the Year, was coming off of a 40 point, school record shooting performance. He looked like he might do it again, dropping 26 first half points.
The first half was nip and tuck with both teams shooting well and the defenses struggling. Furman shot over 65% from deep in half one. Coach Richey made a significant defensive adjustment, planting Cole Bowser on Booth at all times. When Bowser came out, Baba Franklin took his place. Both of them gave him absolutely no room to operate and held Booth to 8 points in the second half. Furman got 48 bench points, including Cooper Bowser, who gave up his starting spot for the good of the team and the opening matchups. Furman really utilized the size advantage, keeping the Samford front court to 14 points combined. Tom House seems to save his best games for Samford in the tournament, dropping 20 points and three threes. Wilkins scored 19 on an efficient 57%.
Despite some crazy threes going down in the final minutes from Samford, Furman made free throws down the stretch to close out a first round “upset”.
Semifinals: Furman 81 - UNCG 75
Well, this one was a stressor. The first half was uninspiring, with Neely running rampant inside and nothing going offensively. It was heading towards a poor offensive showing that Mike Jones has typically been able to force from the Paladins. At halftime, we knew it could go one of two ways: Furman lays down and takes a double digit loss or they get right back into it.
It was a 13-2 run with points from Wilkins, Bowser, and Thomas that got Furman back into the game. Alex went absolutely nuclear, dropping 26 second half points including four threes. He finished with 34. Much like the first meeting between the Spartans and Paladins, Furman closed the game by finding those open corner threes in the midst of a tough defense. Eddrin Bronson hit one of those, a clutch one, to go up 6 and fend off the Spartan comeback. Bronson played a lot of point guard, controlling the tempo and limiting possessions, while allowing Wilkins to work off the ball. More clutch free throws went down at the end of this one, for a Furman squad that had struggled tremendously from the charity stripe early in the year. The Dins shot 88%, including 6-6 from Bronson and 10-10 from Wilkins. On to the Championship.
Championship Game: Furman 76 - ETSU 61
The title game was the Cooper Bowser show. Bowser took the All-SoCon disrespect personally and went right at Defensive Player of the Year Cam Morris III. He scored 14 in the first half, including a stretch where he scored 10 of 12 en route to building a double digit first half lead.
Furman flipped the script on the league leaders, holding them to 3 of 16 from three. ETSU almost seemed hesitant to challenge Furman’s set defense and settled for a lot of setback midrange jumpers when they couldn’t get it inside. Furman also outshot ETSU at the free throw line, 80% to 56%.
The Dins got contributions from all over and controlled the game completely in the second half. Asa Thomas and Tom House had timely threes. Cole Bowser had a huge block and Wilkins provided a dagger steal and dunk during a 5 on 4 situation. Bronson controlled the tempo again, running ETSU out of time to comeback. It was a perfect all-around game from the entire rotation and even Thomas Tillman got some time on the court for Furman’s 8th SoCon title.
Big notes that led to Furman’s title run:
Furman’s rebounding had been great all season. After Western dominated the boards in the final regular season game, it may have been a worry. But Furman had no such issue: The Dins out rebounded opponents on the tournament run by 18.
Furman was a low 30% three point shooting team the whole season. In Asheville, they shot 44.7% as a team, averaging 10 threes per game.
Free throw shooting was a struggle throughout the year. In two of the games, Jadin Booth and Lilian Marville kept the pressure on until the very end. The Paladins simply responded by going 81%, 88%, and 80% respectively in the three games.
At the end of it all, the Furman Paladins are SoCon Champions! Furman has now been to four tournament championships in 5 years and finished the job twice in 3 years. Up next, March Madness! Furman will find out who and where they play at 6:00 PM tonight.
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