College Hoops Top 50

Last Year: 28-8; Southern Conference Regular Season (15-3) and Tournament Champions, lost in the Second Round of the NCAA Tournament

Head Coach: Bob Richey (Seventh Year; 139-54 at Furman, with one NCAA Tournament appearance)

Projected Starting Lineup

PG JP Pegues – 6’1″, 185 – Junior

SG Marcus Foster – 6’4″, 200 – Senior

SF Alex Williams – 6’5″, 235 – Junior

PF Ben Vander Wal – 6’7″, 210 – Sophomore

F/C Garrett Hein – 6’9″, 220 – Senior

Projected Starters’ 2022-23 Stats

JP Pegues: 11.9 ppg, 3.7 rpg, 3.9 apg, 0.6 spg – 34.3% 3FG

Marcus Foster: 10.6 ppg, 5.1 rpg, 1.2 apg, 1.1 spg – 36.1% 3FG

Alex Williams: 6.3 ppg, 2.8 rpg, 0.6 apg, 0.3 spg – 47.9% FG

Ben VanderWal: 4.8 ppg, 3.1 rpg, 0.4 spg, 0.3 bpg – 49.1% FG

Garrett Hein: 7.9 ppg, 4.1 rpg, 1.7 apg, 0.7 spg – 51.7% FG

Experienced Reserves

G PJay Smith – 6’0″, 175 – Junior

F Tyrese Hughey – 6’6″, 220 – Senior

G Carter Whitt – 6’3″, 185 – Junior

Experienced Reserves’ 2022-23 Stats

PJay Smith: 15.8 ppg, 5.9 rpg, 3.8 apg, 1.7 spg – 44.8% 3FG @ Lee University

Tyrese Hughey: 4.7 ppg, 2.3 rpg, 0.6 apg, 0.5 spg – 57.8% FG

Carter Whitt: 2.5 ppg, 1.6 rpg, 2.1 apg, 0.4 spg – 30.3% FG

Freshmen

G Eddrin Bronson – 6’4″, 184 – Freshman

F Davis Molnar – 6’6″, 215 – Redshirt Freshman

W Tommy Humphries – 6’5″, 215 – Freshman

F/C Cooper Bowser – 6’11”, 210 – Freshman

Paladins have proficiency wearing most types of armor, wielding most types of weapons, and winning 20+ games in each campaign. 

Furman had gone 111-47 over the five seasons prior to last; they hadn’t finished lower than third in the Southern Conference over that span, and yet they hadn’t gone to the NCAA Tournament. That all changed last March. The Paladins wrapped up a true breakthrough season by winning the SoCon regular season and tournament crowns, and then casting ‘Memory of the Retrievers’ on Virginia in the NCAA Tournament, knocking off the Cavaliers in the first round before bowing out to national runner-up San Diego State. 

Since Bob Richey took over as head coach in Greenville, Furman has done nothing but win. Entering his seventh season, Richey is still just 40 years old, and with a career .716% winning percentage, he’s been looked at by a host of high major programs – including a few which kicked Richey’s tires this past offseason. For at least another year, though, Richey is staying in the state where he’s lived almost exclusively since the second grade, and with the university at which he’s coached in one capacity or another since 2011. Since he’s staying, the ‘Dins have kept most of the players from last year’s run, and remain a young, improving group. After waiting so long to crash the Big Dance, Furman sees no reason not to wonder ‘what about second tourney?’

The top two scorers from last season may have moved on – and they were great – but Richey is welcoming the other seven players from last season’s core rotation back to the lineup. Leading the way will be last year’s point guard and top returning scorer, JP Pegues. After a largely quiet freshman season, Pegues arrived in his second year. He started each of Furman’s 36 games and played the fourth-most minutes in the league, while ranking second in the SoCon in assists and knocking down 68 triples, good for sixth in the conference. Pegues was at his absolute best down the stretch last year. He scored in double figures 22 times last season, including 17 times in Furman’s final 18 games, even though he was dealing with a nagging leg injury. Over that stretch, Pegues averaged 15.1 points while taking better than four trips to the foul line per contest. He averaged 21 points across three tourney games and was named the Southern Conference Tournament’s MVP. After he was done with the familiar foes last season, Pegues became the fella who knocked down a memorable deep three with two seconds left on the clock to kick Virginia out of the NCAA Tournament. “I feel like those are moments I’ve created my whole life, and I feel like I’m built for,” Pegues said postgame. “I knew all I could do at that point was just ride up and shoot it, and I had full belief that it was going in, and it did.” 

Now, Richey needs him to be that same player he was in the second half of the season all year, and the coach thinks that his young lead guard is just getting started. “JP Pegues is one of the fastest players in our league,” Richey says of the guy who drives his offense. “He didn’t make the all-conference team somehow, but he’s on the all-winner team because he knows how to win.” Pegues is quick with the ball and covers ground in a hurry, and he’s a very reliable ballhandler even at speed. Pegues posted 140 assists over just 66 turnovers in his first season as a starter, helping the Paladins to rank 14th nationally as a team in assist to turnover ratio. “You have to have identity. I think when you get into big games, what’s the best way to win them? Get to your identity,” Richey has described his philosophy. “Our team is built like that. We have guys that we’ve recruited to play at a certain tempo.” Though he led the ‘Dins in made triples, Pegues also shot 49.7% overall inside the arc and proved increasingly adept at getting to the charity stripe. Richey likes to push the tempo, and Pegues is a natural at attacking off the bounce and forcing defenses to react. Though he is not yet a finished product from mid-range, Pegues made 60.2% of his tries near the rim last year, per Bart Torvik. Pegues is explosive in the lane, and can make acrobatic shots against bigger players or flush it when he gets aggressively to the cup. Pegues shot 34.3% from deep last year and 69.4% from the foul line, and his 3FG rate slipped a bit as the season wore on; not that it stopped him when everything mattered most. If he can bring those percentages up a bit while continuing to grow as a playmaker and clutch performer, Pegues should be on the shortlist for SoCon Player of the Year as a junior. 

While Pegues’ star is just ascending, Marcus Foster enters his fifth year in Greenville as one of the most steady, proven and consistent Paladins. A solid presence next to Pegues who does very good work on the boards, Foster has done nothing but get better the past four years. After redshirting and then averaging 2.7 points as a freshman reserve, Foster has averaged 9.6 points and 5.1 boards (second on the team) on 36% shooting from the land of trey the past two years. He’s also converted 79.6% of his freebies over that span, and likes getting to the line. Despite playing third or even fourth fiddle on last year’s team at times, Foster came up big over and over; he hit a winning triple with less than a minute left in overtime to beat Samford at the end of January. Then, in the SoCon title game in March, Foster drilled a pair of late triples to put the championship out of reach against Chattanooga – the team which had beaten Furman on a legendary buzzer-beater to win the same game over Richey’s team just a year earlier. 

Foster graduated this spring, but still has two years of eligibility left due to his ‘Covid Year’, and will no longer be playing as a lower-rung option this time around. He’s developed into a strong perimeter defender who can check quick guards and some larger wings. Foster has also come up with 74 steals in his last 70 games, and he routinely focused on the other team’s top perimeter threat a year ago. Offensively, Foster has tremendous potential; he managed last season’s production on a 16.5% usage rate, and made less than 30% of his mid-range attempts after being well over 40% over his first two campaigns, per Bart Torvik. He wasn’t much of a shooter out of the box, but last year, Foster finished second on the team in made three’s. After making just two of them as a freshman and 29 last year, Foster canned 65 deep heaves a year ago, and his development as a shooter and burgeoning three-level scoring has Richey excited for what’s to come.

Alex Williams came off the bench as a sophomore, but now he’s looking to emerge as the best player from among a solid group of forwards who played support roles last season. Williams is a dude: a strapping fella with a nose for the lane and enough versatility to make life a real problem for the other team. After playing as a deeper reserve his first year, Williams flashed considerable potential last winter, and whether playing inside or out, he’s a whole lot to deal with. In his first full year, Williams made 35.7% of his triples and shot a whopping 62.3% inside the arc. “Our play style, all of our guards and our bigs can dribble, pass and shoot, so it’s not really anyone on the court that’s a liability and very turnover prone, so it’s kind of our makeup as players, too,” Richey has stated. At 6’5″, 235 pounds, Williams is difficult to stop from getting to where he wants to go, and the more he focuses his efforts inside, the more dangerous his outside range will seem. 

Though he didn’t get a huge share of minutes last year, he proved capable of scoring points in bunches and adding a physical element which made Furman’s halfcourt offense very dangerous. Since he kept on doing lots with his smaller role, as the season wore on, Richey got Williams onto the floor as often as he could. Over Furman’s final 16 games, Williams averaged 18 minutes, 7.9 points and 3.8 boards on 41.1% shooting from downtown – and by the end of the season, he was sitting on a 19.5% usage rate, good for fourth on the team. Williams isn’t track meet-fast, but his quickness around the rim seems amplified by his bursts of power going towards the basket. Though he doesn’t generally play above the rim, Williams knows how to use his size on the way there. He’s highly adept at dribbling in a bit, shifting somebody out of his way with his lower half, hesitating, bumping people some more and then slipping towards the rim for good looks or layups. His handle developed a bit as the year went on, and if Williams can confidently take defenders in from the perimeter with his dribble, there won’t be many ways to stop him. He moves his feet well defensively, and his wide, solid frame can make it tough even for larger players to get through Williams. 

He’s been a starter for 41 games already, so by and large Furman knows what it has in Garrett Hien. The 6’9″ forward is a solid outside shooter who can pick-and-pop or roll, knows his role and plays it efficiently on defense, and makes intelligent passes. He’s played 34 games and handed out 57 assists in each of the past two seasons, and Hein plays a patient, savvy offensive game which fits in nicely around the talented scorers which have surrounded him. Hien made 35.1% of his triples a year ago, and complimented it by making 68.8% of his tries close to the cup, with 18 dunks, per Bart Torvik. Unfortunately, he’s just a 52% career foul shooter through three seasons. It would be a big help if he – and most of Furman’s support players, really – could make real strides at the free throw line this year. The ‘Dins ranked 48th in the country in made freebies last year, 72nd in attempts, and 84th in FT%; but the guys responsible for 298 of their 539 makes are gone now, and the returnees combined to hit just 68% of their foul shots. 

Long and lanky, Hien is not an overly physical post player, relying instead upon great positioning, clean footwork, and his reach to disrupt and deny passes before people can get comfy and go to work inside. With added strength and/or a bit of a mean streak, Hien could evolve into a more impactful version of who he’s been. Now that excellent forward Jalen Slawson and his team-leading 7.1 rebounds and 1.5 blocks per game have gone to the pro’s, Richey needs Hien – the elder statesman up front – to throw his weight around a bit more. And if he could be a bit more of a rim protector, too, it wouldn’t hurt. If Hien can keep it up from the outside and be the guy who threw down with two hands all over Western Carolina in the SoCon tourney last year more often, the ‘Dins won’t see such a big dropoff in the paint. 

The question of who will play the prime minutes behind Pegues and Foster has been a battle between two players who, if all goes as hoped, should each get plenty of run this year regardless of who plays in which lineup. Carter Whitt is the larger of the two, and brings meaningful experience to the floor entering his fourth year. A Top 100 recruit out of prestegeous Wolfesboro (NH) Prep, Whitt reclassified and signed on at Wake Forest during the 2020 season. He played significant minutes for the rest of that season, but didn’t get nearly the same minutes two years ago on an older team. Last year, he ended up somewhat blocked in Greenville, too, by Mike Bothwell, Foster and the emergence of Pegues. This season, Richey is hoping to see Whitt’s talent finally shine through. A smart passer who is capable of running the show, Whitt has the potential to be a great facilitator. A larger playmaker who can keep the offense running while other players score, Whitt sees and feeds the post smoothly and can make some very creative passes. There are also some times gets a bit unruly with the ball trying to make a bit too much happen, and his shooting has been rather inconsistent. If Whitt can knock down some outside shots with regularity and become a more stout defender, it would be a real help to Pegues as he assumes the lead role. Whitt did improve his assist to turnover ratio considerably last season, and is at his best when he’s making safe plays which get his higher-scoring teammates involved. 

While Whitt moved down a weight class in coming to Furman, PJay Smith is stepping up from the Division II level. He starred for Lee (TN) University the past two years, and before that was teammates with Pegues during their AAU days. “We are very excited to add PJay to our program,” Richey said when Smith signed in Greenville. “He brings excellent shot making ability to our offense but also brings high level perimeter defending and the ability to rebound from the guard spot. He’s a proven all-conference player from a well-coached, winning program in Lee University that’s coached by former Furman guard Bubba Smith.” Though smaller than Whitt, Smith is fast with the ball and changes directions quickly. He was an extremely dangerous outside shooter at Lee; Smith knocked down a sensational 54.7% of his triples as a freshman, and followed it up by splashing 82 treys in just 28 games last year, at a 44.8% clip. Furman ranked 10th in the country last year with 340 total made three’s, but the ‘Dins shot just 34.4% as a unit, and more than 100 of those triples have been lost to graduation or the Transfer Portal. If Smith can translate his great range into meaningful production in the SoCon, he’ll be in the lineup regularly. He’s a fiesty little guard who rebounds very well, and can start his team’s offense from the opposite side of the floor. Smith also drives the ball tenaciously and gets to the line often – and he knocked down 83.5% of his freebies a year ago. “Really encouraged by PJay Smith right now, just by how hard he’s playing and what he’s doing,” Richey said in a statement during Furman’s exhibition tour of the Bahamas this summer. Smith has shot the ball well during training camps and may, with his knock-down range and defensive prowess, begin the season as a starter.

Ben VanderWal is another big reason why Furman should stay solid up front. He has proven already to be an instant jolt of energy when he gets onto the floor, and when VanderWal gets into the lane, he’s driving hard to the cup regardless of who or what attempts to stop him. The SoCon All-Freshman pick started seven games as a rookie and may be in the starting lineup this year when Furman needs to match up against a bigger team; he ended up averaged the most minutes (16.3) of any reserve Paladin last season. He’s not huge or especially athletic, but VanderWal has an aggressive approach on both ends which really added something to last year’s rotation. He wasn’t easy to score upon as a lanky freshman, and with a year’s experience and strength training, VanderWal should be an important defender this year. He doesn’t have perfect timing yet as a shot blocker but will have a go at deflecting and tipping passes or influencing a shot attempt whenever possible, and is very active inside against bigger players. 

With the makings of a highly efficient offensive player, VanderWal shoots three’s or gets to the paint; he attempted just one shot all year from mid-range. Though he made just 27.6% of his triples as a rookie and isn’t the quickest trigger in the South, VanderWal’s shot comes out fine and he should improve from distance. If he does, it will make his physicality closer in that much more exhausting to deal with. VanderWal finished second on the ‘Dins in offensive boards last year, and he tied for the team lead in putback tries, with those second chances accounting for 27% of the baskets he scored near the cup, per Hoop-Math. His crash-the-paint style also resulted in 71 trips to the free show line, where he made 69% of his attempts. If VanderWal can continue to earn points via great effort, without needing plays run to keep him involved – VanderWal’s usage rate was under 14% last year – he will prove invaluable in helping the ‘Dins avoid scoring droughts as they try to replace the 33+ points per game which have gone with the losses of SoCon Player of the Year Slawson and leading scorer Bothwell. 

With Whitt and/or Smith likely coming off the bench and VanderWal functioning as a fifth starter, Tyrese Hughey will offer athleticism, experience, and matchup options for Richey in reserve. Hughey has played a similar role each of his first two seasons, averaging about 11 minutes. He makes his presence known in those few minutes, though, as a highly active defender who is also wonderfully efficient as a scorer. Hughey took a back seat to the veterans once conference play began, but through Furman’s first 13 games last year, he averaged 7.2 points on 67.7% true shooting. For the year, Hughey bested VanderWal – and every other Paladin – by making a scorching 78.6% of his attempts near the rim, and he hit 57.8% of his shots overall. Like seemingly everyone on the roster, Hughey has range out to the three point arc, and began to show it last year; in the seven games in which he scored double figures, Hughey canned 12 of the 17 total treys he made last winter. Hughey can guard wings and forwards, and gives a strong effort no matter who he’s up against. Hughey has been recovering from injury this summer and did not play during Furman’s trip to the Bahamas this August, but once healthy, he will hope to play closer to 20 minutes per tilt in his third season. 

Five Stats Which Tell The Tale (with national ranks)

55.0 – Team Effective FG% (18th)

44.9 – Opponent FG Percentage (233rd)

1.465 – Team Assist to Turnover Ratio (14th)

0.318 – Opponent Free Throw Attempts to Field Goal Attempts (209th)

9.3 – Made 3FG’s Per Game (19th)

Joining him in the competition for minutes will be redshirt freshman Davis Molnar, a wing forward with good size and better than average feet. A two-sport star out of North Carolina, Molnar was named all-state on the soccer pitch in addition to receiving Division I hoops offers. Not just nimble but strongly-built, Molnar adds to Richey’s growing arsenal of skilled combo forwards. In addition to ranking up double-doubles in high school, Molnar is a keen passer who sees the floor well and – no doubt owing some to his soccer experience – sees plays developing a step ahead of most young forwards. Richey loves to have multiple ballhandlers on the floor, and after a year marinating in the system, Molnar should be ready to earn some minutes. 

Three freshmen are coming aboard with real impact potential; it just might take a year or two to see them much, with all of the veterans. Richey and his staff have utilized developmental redshirt years to great effect, and Furman has become one of those programs with consistent results in turning unfinished youngsters into high-impact veterans. Eddrin Bronson is a rangy combo guard who like to drive the ball. He’s got a quick first step and some explosion near the basket, and Bronson is a tough matchup at both ends of the floor. “Ed Bronson has been probably the surprise of the trip in a lot of ways as a freshman in what he’s able to do, his effort on the defensive end,” Richey said from the Bahamas. 

Five Out-of-Conference Games to Keep an Eye on

@ Arkansas – December 4

@ UAB – November 25

@ Tulane – December 14

N – Wichita State / Coastal Carolina – November 17

@ Princeton – December 2

Cooper Bowser is the type of big, bouncy, rim-running post player that every coach loves to have as a developing prospect, and the ‘Dins got to see some of what the Virginia native can do in the Bahamas. He’s got tremendous potential as a shot blocker, and can spot up to drill jumpers more than 15 feet from the hoop. A highly active defender and rebounder, Bowser has some unteachable gifts which teams like Virginia, Texas A&M and Boise State had interest in over the past couple of years. Bowser played a prep year at hoops powerhouse Sunrise Christian Academy in Kansas last year, and he could redshirt due to the experience ahead of him. Tommy Humphries has a bunch of the same experience playing against big-time competition already which Bowser brings. A 6’5″ wing scorer from Minnesota star-hooper factory Totino-Grace, Humphries won big in high school, and brings great size and defensive skills to Greenville. 

Despite losing two of the better and most successful players in program history, Furman isn’t a flash in the pan. This program has been constructed purposefully, and there is depth of talent on the roster. Richey doesn’t run a breakneck pace, but he talks often about the desire to move the ball at pace. The bigger thing is that his teams play clean, tidy basketball. 

“There’s definitely I would say some Princeton concepts that are woven in. We like to play a little faster than your normal Princeton stuff,” Richey said at the NCAA Tournament. It’s a system which makes good players into stars, and the ‘Dins have a bunch of good players ready to take their turn. 

Furman has ranked 51st in the country or better in team FG% each of the last five years, and last season the ‘Dins finished 10th nationally in Evan Miya’s ‘Kill Shot’ statistic. Further, they were top 20 in assist to turnover ratio. This isn’t a flashy, run-and-gun outfit: they simply play good, smart basketball. It may not be quite as dramatic a run this year, but Furman will again contend for a place in the Madness, and Richey’s program will continue rising.