{"id":24238,"date":"2023-03-27T11:24:12","date_gmt":"2023-03-27T15:24:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/?p=24238"},"modified":"2023-03-28T10:29:53","modified_gmt":"2023-03-28T14:29:53","slug":"furman-shoots-and-scores-ncaa-win-elevates-university","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/furman-shoots-and-scores-ncaa-win-elevates-university\/","title":{"rendered":"Furman shoots and scores! NCAA win elevates university"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When the Furman Paladins downed Virginia for the first upset of the 2023 NCAA Tournament, they raised the university\u2019s profile to stratospheric heights, and suddenly everybody was talking about Furman.<\/p>\n<p>Universities often feel a boost of limelight when they appear on the national stage for the first time, or the first time in a long time, like Furman, who hadn\u2019t been to the tournament since 1980. It\u2019s called <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Flutie_effect\">the Flutie Effect<\/a>, named for quarterback Doug Flutie whose hail Mary to the end zone lifted his Boston College team over the Miami Hurricanes in 1984. Universities report boosts in applications, donations and in their general reputation.<\/p>\n<p>Just making the tournament was a boost. There\u2019s all the pre-game hype and speculation about an \u201cimpressive\u201d Furman team beating Virginia, and the game itself, watched on TruTV by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportsmediawatch.com\/2023\/03\/march-madness-ratings-opening-thursday-viewership-multiyear-high-cbs\/\">905,000<\/a> people and many more on other platforms. But after the winning bucket by JP Pegues with 2.2 seconds left, people flocked to find out more about Furman.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe couldn\u2019t buy this level of publicity for the university,\u201d said Tom Evelyn, vice president for University Communications. \u201cAs more people know about Furman \u2013 not just our basketball team, which is amazing, but what we stand for academically \u2013 we hope to also see increases in the number of students applying and people willing to support all our efforts.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Admissions is also expecting a sustained increase in interest and applications. \u201cThe school spirit, campus support, community engagement and overall excitement for Furman will prove beneficial to enrollment metrics for the entering class of \u201923 and beyond,\u201d said Brad Pochard, associate vice president for enrollment.<\/p>\n<p>We pulled some stats to share with you from our websites, social media and other communication platforms, comparing March 12-19 to the same week in 2022.<\/p>\n<p>Website: Furman\u2019s portal to the world was crucial to providing information.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Overall Furman.edu website traffic surged more than 415%; the homepage saw a 700% jump<\/li>\n<li>Website traffic from social media grew over 1,200%<\/li>\n<li>Atlanta, Chicago and New York were among the top five identified cities of origin<\/li>\n<li>Web visitors were curious about our majors and minors, our history and more info on the \u201cabout\u201d page; Furman.edu\/about had a 3,256% spike<\/li>\n<li>There were traffic increases of 359% and 319% respectively for the \u201capply\u201d and \u201crequest more information\u201d pages<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Social media: Social media played a key role in celebrating the team, engaging with audiences and driving traffic to our websites.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The number of people who saw Furman social media grew 600%<\/li>\n<li>TikTok views hit 200,000<\/li>\n<li>Facebook reach hit almost half a million<\/li>\n<li>Twitter reached 146,000, a 1,313% growth<\/li>\n<li>The Athletics Facebook page saw an 800% increase in page visits, with the top post attracting 33,398 impressions<\/li>\n<li>The Admissions Instagram page had 34% more visitors<\/li>\n<li>Athletics Twitter saw a 726% increase in page visits and a 930% increase in mentions<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>News media: The news media couldn\u2019t stop talking about Furman as a Cinderella story.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Mentions from the news media grew 15,700%, from 31 to more than 4,900<\/li>\n<li>ABC\u2019s Good Morning America, NBC\u2019s Today Show, the CBS Evening News, The Associated Press, USA Today and other national outlets covered Furman\u2019s win<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Advertising and merchandise sales: Paid advertising reinforced all other activities and included a TV spot in New York.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Paid advertising impressions hit 580,147<\/li>\n<li>We also saw a jump in sales of Furman gear. In the campus bookstore alone, sales increased almost 300%<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Paladins&#8217; win in the NCAA Tournament was a win for the university overall, as traffic to our websites and engagement with social media spiked. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":389,"featured_media":24240,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,24],"tags":[275,1939,1980],"class_list":["post-24238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-admission","category-athletics","tag-admissions","tag-ncaa-mens-basketball-tournament","tag-ucomm"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24238","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\/389"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24238\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}