Getty Francis Alonso and the UNC Greensboro Spartans will visit the Furman Paladins.
The Furman Paladins will host the UNC Greensboro Spartans for a Southern Conference matchup at Timmons Arena on Thursday.
The game is scheduled to start at 7:30 p.m. ET. While it won’t be broadcast nationally on television anywhere in the US, you can still watch a live stream of the game on your computer, phone, or streaming device via ESPN+, the new digital streaming service from ESPN (no cable required) that has exclusive coverage to dozens of college basketball games — and several other sports — every week.
You can start a free seven-day trial of ESPN+ right here, and you can then watch a live stream of the game on your computer via ESPN.com, or on your phone (Android and iPhone compatible), tablet, Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV, Chromecast, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, or other compatible streaming device via the ESPN app.
If you can’t watch live, all games — including UNC Greensboro vs Furman — that are streamed on ESPN+ are also available to be watched afterwards on-demand via ESPN.com or the ESPN app.
UNC Greensboro vs Furman Preview
The Paladins (20-5 overall, 9-4 in SoCon play) have won four straight, most recently ending their home tilt against East Tennessee with a 41-18 run to win 91-61.
“That was fun. Proud of our group. Proud of our team,” Furman head coach Bob Richey said, according to Mid-Major Madness. “Proud of our program and we’re playing as hard as we have played all year on the defensive end and they’ve just bought into it. We obviously had to make some adjustments to the game plan after what they did to us up in Johnson City and I thought we stuck to the game plan and all of our guys were connected for the most part.”
Seniors Matt Rafferty and Andrew Brown led Furman with 19 and 17 points, respectively. Brown didn’t miss a shot, going 6-of-6 from the field and 5-of-5 from deep. He’s shooting 44.7 percent from three-point range for the season.
“It was one of those nights where the ball just kept going in,” the guard said, per Mid-Major Madness. “It’s fun when that happens and it hasn’t happened a lot for me this year. Credit to my teammates like Raff, who just kept finding me. Whenever I was open, the ball was in my hands.”
Rafferty leads the team in points (17), rebounds (8.9), assists (4.2), steals (2.7), and blocks per game (1.1). The big man’s 63 percent shooting from the field is second only to freshman Robert Swanson, who’s played 17 minutes on the season.
Against ETSU, Rafferty added five assists and three steals, bringing his season total to 67 thefts, a school record.
“When you’ve played for four years, it’s pretty easy to predict where the ball’s going to go or what plays are going to be run, especially if you start to know the systems,” Rafferty said, per Mid-Major Madness. “Getting hands on passes, rolls and post-ups, turning the ball over and getting out and running. I think it helps our team a lot.”
UNC Greensboro (22-3, 11-1) sits in second in the conference. Their only SoCon loss came against first-place Wofford on January 10.
Since that defeat, they’ve won eight straight.
On Saturday, the Spartans trailed Chattanooga 31-28 at halftime before blowing their foes out in the second half for a 78-63 victory.
Francis Alonso, the team’s leading scorer at 17.2 points per game, scored 18 of his game-high 28 points in the second half.
“In the first half, we really didn’t really like the approach of how we started the game and our intensity,” the senior guard said, according to the News & Record. “We were kind of sloppy, and we realized that as soon as we went into halftime. We focused on having a lot of effort and playing together.
“That intensity that we talked about at halftime kind of pushed us in the second half.”