We have our first upset of 2023 March Madness: Furman — a No. 13 seed — took down No. 4 Virginia on Thursday.
Furman is known as the Paladins, which had a lot of people on Twitter asking: Wait, what’s a Paladin?
To borrow from the oldest conceit in the book: Merriam-Webster defines a paladin as “a trusted military leader (as for a medieval prince).” The dictionary also tells us that “in ancient Rome, the emperor’s palace was located on the Palatine Hill; since the site was the seat of imperial power, Latin palatium came to mean “imperial” as well as “palace.” From palatium came Latin palatinus, also meaning “imperial” and later “imperial official.”
But a paladin also became a knight who was part of the court of Charlemagne in the 1500s, and that’s the more common definition. Furman took on the nickname per its site in 1961:
The football team had been named the Purple Hurricanes in the 1920s. The basketball team had previously been named the “Paladins” and the “Paladins of the court” by the late J. Carter (Scoop) Latimer, former sports editor of The Greenville News. The baseball team was previously known as the “Hornets” and the cross country and track teams were the “Harriers.”
Through the years many requests had been made to establish a common name for all Furman teams. Not until the spring of 1961 did the move attract enough interest to warrant a change.
Also, fun fact: Furman was No. 3 in this year’s FTW’s ranking of the best mascots of the 2023 NCAA men’s tournament.
Furman v Virginia
Extra points to both of these schools for actually having mascot suits but I really hate humanoid mascots lmao I'm picking the paladins because I can't see it's eyes pic.twitter.com/ZQCse4KEOA
— grapes (@bravegrapes) March 16, 2023
