With five freshmen, four sophomores, one senior and a high school senior who will be at Furman next fall, the Paladins entered the Southern Conference 7s Tournament with the youngest team in the 8-team field.<\/p>\n
But Furman, a dark horse in the Wilmington, N.C. tournament, \u00a0turned some heads and surprised themselves by advancing to the quarterfinals and finishing with a 4-2 record.<\/p>\n
The squad started slowly and surrendered two early trys to Coastal Carolina before finding some rhythm.\u00a0 But the team had too big a hole a dig out from and dropped a 10-5 opening game.<\/p>\n
In the next contest, Furman sleepwalked through the first half against the Citadel and were behind 17-5 at halftime.\u00a0 After a lecture by coaches John Roberts and Darren Scott, the team scored 31 straight points and left the Bulldogs somewhat bewildered.\u00a0 The final score was 31-17.<\/p>\n
In that second game the young squad found some rhythm and confidence. The team logged victories over the College of Charleston and Lander by 12 point margins.<\/p>\n
With the win, the Paladins advanced to the quarterfinals to face a very good UNC-C\u00a0 team.\u00a0 In one of the most entertaining games of the tournament Furman staked itself to a 15-0 lead in the first half.\u00a0 But the experienced 49ners would not go away.<\/p>\n
The green team scored right before the break and steadily chipped away until the score was tied 15-15 with 30 seconds remaining.\u00a0 Facing a defensive scrum on the UNC-C 20-meter line, the front row trio of Lawson Held, Lucas Ward and Trent Pannell pressured the 49ers front three.<\/p>\n
Winning the ball against the head, Zach Roberts, a Riverside high school senior who will be attending Furman next fall, scooped up the ball and dashed 20 meters for the winning try on the final play of game.<\/p>\n
The Paladins faced a fresh Coastal team 90 minutes later. While Furman played exceptional defense early, the Paladins had no answer for the Chanticleer scrum-half who blistered the team with two late trys and set up another. The final tally was 17-7.<\/p>\n
Coastal advanced to the finals where they were defeated by UNC-Greensboro.<\/p>\n
Coach Roberts said his team has been practicing 7s, on and off, for the first three weeks of practice in preparation for the tournament.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe team really began to figure it out and, for the most, part improved as the tournament progressed,\u201d said Roberts. \u201cThe win against UNC-C was really rewarding as they were experienced and very athletic. Our guys worked great together and we had a good game plan.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
With five freshmen, four sophomores, one senior and a high school senior who will be at Furman next fall, the Paladins entered the Southern Conference 7s Tournament with the youngest team in the 8-team field. But Furman, a dark horse in the Wilmington, N.C. tournament, \u00a0turned some heads and surprised themselves by advancing to the quarterfinals and finishing with a 4-2 record.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-athletics","category-rugby"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=797"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}