Getty Head coach Mark Speir of the Western Carolina Catamounts
The Western Carolina Catamounts will visit the Furman Paladins at Paladin Stadium in Greenville on Saturday.
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The game (2 p.m. ET start time) won’t be on TV, but anyone in the US can watch Western Carolina vs Furman football live on ESPN+ right here:
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Western Carolina vs Furman Preview
The Catamounts are the more fresh team, having played three games this past fall. Western Carolina lost them all, losing to the likes of Eastern Kentucky, North Carolina and Liberty, while failing to score more than 17 points in any of those games.
On offense, Western Carolina will be likely be led by Carlos Davis, although Will Jones performer the best of the four quarterbacks who saw action last fall. Right now, it’s looking like Davis will be will get the nod as a starter, which would be his first year leading the team. The 6-3, 215 pound sophomore already seems to have his team and head coach behind him.
“There’s some things that he does that you don’t coach … He’s got a natural, God-given ability. He’s just got that ‘it’ factor about him,” Catamounts head coach Mark Speir said about his young signal-caller.
“You don’t just wake up and be great,” Speir added, referring to Davis. “We preach that all the time and that’s his reminder that if I want to be great I’ve got to be money every day. You know, and I think it says a lot about who he is. Every day he’s going to remind himself of where he wants to be.”
The Catamounts finished their 2019 campaign with a 3-9 overall mark (2-6 in the Southern Conference), and they’ll be looking to improve in the eight games they’ll have in early 2021.
On the other side, the Paladins have eight returning starters from their 2019 squad. They finished 8-5 (6-2 in the Southern Conference), and they put up 33.5 points a game on offense. They made it all the way to the FCS playoffs in 2019 season, losing to Austin Peay, 42-6, and they’re ready to win it all this year, with several starters returning.
Furman senior guard Reed Kroeber revealed where the team’s primary focus will be this season. “The mindset is that we’ve put in so much time to get to this point, it would be dumb to do something that would put this in jeopardy,” Kroeber told the Greenville News. “Everybody — from the fifth-year seniors to the freshman — has put in a ton of time to get here.”
Fellow senior and offensive lineman Jordan Harris agrees. “I think we’re at 430 days since the last time we played,” Harris said. “For me personally, coming back was a matter of finishing what we started. That’s winning a conference championship, going as far as we can in the playoffs and finishing on a higher note than we did in 2019.”