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Furman lost 75% of its scoring but returns Johnston and adds Kell, Toews and Bell, making the Paladins a talented yet uncertain SoCon favorite.
Written By
Written By
Furman went 22-13 last season and 10-8 in the Southern Conference. Then the Paladins won three games in three days in Asheville as the No. 6 seed. They beat regular-season champion ETSU 76-61 in the final and drew UConn in the NCAA Tournament, where they lost 82-71. The core of that team did not stay together. Seven players left, and they took three of every four points with them.
The league's coaches picked Furman first anyway. The Paladins got 10 of the 11 first-place votes and 100 points, 14 more than ETSU. Johnston and Kell, a graduate forward who averaged 13.6 points at Western Carolina, both made the preseason all-conference team. Only Furman, Wofford, and VMI have two players on it.
Seven players from last year's roster are gone. Together they scored 2,014 of Furman's 2,671 points, about 75 percent. They also made 228 of the team's 311 threes.
Alex Wilkins is the biggest loss in the league. He started all 35 games as a freshman and averaged 17.8 points and 4.7 assists. He led Furman in both, made second-team All-SoCon, and was the most outstanding player of the SoCon tournament. He transferred to Kentucky.
Cooper Bowser was the other half of March. The 6-foot-11 junior averaged 13.8 points and 5.9 rebounds in 25 games and shot 76.6 percent from the field. He led the team with 29 blocks. He had 21 points and 11 rebounds in the title game. He transferred to Arkansas.
Asa Thomas was the shooter. He averaged 11.9 points, third on the team, and led Furman with 79 threes at 38.2 percent. He transferred to UIC, close to his hometown of Lake Forest, Ill.
Eddrin Bronson averaged 5.4 points off the bench in 34 games. He stayed in the league and transferred to The Citadel.
Tom House and Ben Vander Wal were seniors, and neither is back. House, who came from Florida State, averaged 8.5 points and made 52 threes. He joined an Ohio lawsuit seeking a fifth year and won an injunction, but an appeals court put it on hold and then reversed it on Oct. 2. He remains ineligible. Vander Wal started 31 games, averaged 7.2 points and 5.5 rebounds, and made the All-SoCon defensive team. Thomas Tillman, also a senior, played in six games.
That is the point guard, the best big man, the best shooter, and an all-defensive forward.
Johnston is the anchor. The 6-foot-11 Australian started all 35 games and averaged 9.8 points and 9.0 rebounds. He had 11 double-doubles. He tied Wilkins for the team lead with 27 steals and was second with 26 blocks. He scored a season-high 21 at Chattanooga and grabbed 16 rebounds against Samford. He is back for a fifth year because a California judge granted him a temporary restraining order in a class-action eligibility case, Mid-Major Madness reported. He is the only returner who started more than six games last season.
Cole Bowser is Cooper's younger brother, not the big man who left. He is a 6-foot-6 sophomore guard from DeMatha. Furman planned to redshirt him. He made his debut on Jan. 7 at Chattanooga with six points and 10 rebounds and stayed in the rotation. He averaged 5.2 points and 5.3 rebounds in 20 games, made six starts, and shot 35.9 percent from three.
Abijah Franklin averaged 4.4 points in 24 games off the bench and scored a career-high 14 against Wofford. He led South Carolina in scoring as a high school senior at 31.4 points a game.
The rest of the returners have barely played. Mason Smith, a 6-foot-7 junior, was limited to seven games by a knee injury. He has had another injury setback and may be limited early this season. Davis Molnar, a 6-foot-6 senior, hurt himself in the exhibition at Alabama and missed the whole season. He averaged 3.5 points and 2.7 rebounds in 33 games the year before. Collin O'Neal, Owen Ritger, and Gunnar Lewis played a combined 37 games. Ritger was hurt in the preseason and is expected to miss most or all of the season. Mid-Major Madness reported in September that he was expected to miss significant time.
Richey added four Division I transfers and four freshmen. The transfers go straight at the two biggest holes: a lead guard and size.
Kell is the headliner. He spent four years at Western Carolina and started all 31 games last season. He averaged 13.6 points and 4.8 rebounds, scored 27 at High Point and at UNCG, and had 18 in the tournament semifinal loss to ETSU. In 2024-25 he averaged 11.7 points and shot 37.9 percent from three. He is from Fort Mill, S.C., so this was a short move.
Luka Toews is the likely point guard. He started 20 of 29 games at Boston College last season and averaged 6.3 points and 2.2 assists while shooting 39.2 percent from three. He scored 21 against Fairleigh Dickinson and had 14 points and eight assists at Florida State.
Jaxson Bell was Army's second-leading scorer. He averaged 12.2 points and 5.0 rebounds in 30 games and eight starts. He scored a career-high 24 against Binghamton and had a 10-assist game against Bucknell. At 6-foot-2 and 211 pounds, he is a guard who rebounds.
Jordan Butler is the size. The 7-footer is a Greenville native who played at Missouri and South Carolina. He has 83 SEC games and 17 starts. Last season he played in 25 games for the Gamecocks, started four, and shot 44.7 percent.
The freshmen come with real résumés. Cameron Elwer was named Mr. Ohio by the state coaches association after averaging 28.6 points for a 29-0 state champion. Jerrin Samuel was the Georgia AAAAA Player of the Year after averaging 27.3 points and 12.4 rebounds. Nikos Koulisianis is a 6-foot-9 forward from Brno, Czechia, by way of Montverde Academy. He averaged 14.5 points for Czechia's under-18 team. Nate Wilbourne is a guard from Mauldin High School, just down the road.
Richey also added two assistants. Jordan Lyons, a former Furman star, returned after three seasons on Navy's staff. Riley Conroy came from South Alabama, where he spent three seasons as an assistant.
The first question is the ball. Wilkins had 165 assists. No returner had more than 60. Toews has never averaged more than 2.2 assists in a season, so this may be a shared job between him, Bell, and Cole Bowser.
The second question is shooting. The returners made 83 threes last season. Kell and Toews are the best bets to change that, and both shot better than 37 percent from deep in their best years.
The frontcourt should hold up. Johnston averaged nine rebounds a game. Butler gives Richey a true 7-footer behind him. Kell can play the four and pull a big man out to the arc. What nobody on the roster can do is finish like Cooper Bowser, who made more than three of every four shots he took.
The defense is the safest part of the plan. Furman held opponents to 42.7 percent shooting last season. Johnston was the center of that, and he is back.
Furman plays an exhibition at Alabama on Oct. 8, then Georgia Southern at home and College of Charleston on the road. The regular season opens Nov. 2 against Bethune-Cookman in Rock Hill. Northern Iowa, which beat Furman by 16 last November, visits Timmons Arena on Nov. 7. The Paladins then play at Holy Cross, at Belmont, and at Radford, and host Elon and Austin Peay. They play at Troy on Dec. 1. Troy won at Timmons last season, 64-61.
League play is 20 games now that Tennessee Tech has joined. Furman opens at UNCG on Dec. 5. The ETSU games come early and late: at Johnson City on Dec. 22 and at home on Jan. 30. Wofford visits on Jan. 18, and Furman goes to Spartanburg on Feb. 20. The last week is the hardest. Furman plays at Chattanooga on Feb. 24 and closes the regular season at home against UNCG on Feb. 27. UNCG beat Furman at Timmons last February.
Furman lost the league's best freshman, its best big man, and its best shooter. It still has Johnston, a proven league scorer in Kell, and a coach who just won the whole thing from the No. 6 seed.
First is a fair pick, but it is not a safe one. The returners scored 25 percent of last year's points. If Toews or Bell can run the offense and Kell scores like he did in Cullowhee, Furman is the team to beat in Asheville again. If the guard play wobbles, the Paladins will lean on Johnston and their defense, and that is a team that wins 12 league games, not 15.
