Goudelock's late 3 helps Cougars beat Eagles

By Gary McCann - gmccann@heraldonline.com

CHARLESTON -- The play the College of Charleston runs is called “three,” and when coach Bobby Cremins called timeout with 3:44 to play and his team leading 59-57 on Tuesday in Carolina First Arena, he knew before his team came to the huddle what he was going to call.

Winthrop coach Randy Peele did, too.

But big shooters make shots when it matters, and Andrew Goudelock did just that, coming off a screen at the top of the key and nailing a 3-pointer that keyed a 10-0 run to close the game and give the Cougars (1-1) a 69-57 win.

“Heck of a three,” Cremins said.

“We knew it was coming,” Peele said.

But because of the matchups, Winthrop's best defender, Mantoris Robinson, who had throttled Goudelock while he was on him, was guarding 6-foot-8 Willis Hall, another 3-point threat. That left freshman Robbie Dreher to shade Goudelock and Dreher went the wrong way on the screen at the top of the key.

“I thought he'd done a good job on him,” Peele said. “They made crucial threes. It seemed like every time we got it to one possession, they hit a three, and Goudelock was huge for them.”

Goudelock finished with 18 points on a modest 7-for-17 shooting, including 3-of-9 on threes, but every shot he made seemed to come at just the right time.

“We earned that win,” Cremins said.

Or Goudelock did.

The Eagles earned the right to assess a better performance than the one they produced in their season opener.

This game the Eagles did many things right, including playing with some bounce in their step. They came out aggressively, attacked off the dribble, forced some turnovers and got some easy buckets.

The Eagles got up 70 shots, 22 more than the Cougars, meaning the defense was pretty good, but not great.

“It was a game where neither team could guard the ball very well,” Peele said.

They won the boards 41-38, getting 20 offensive rebounds. And they forced 19 turnovers while committing just 13.

Those are normally numbers that add up to a win.

But once again, the Eagles' inability to make anything resembling a jump shot — or at least enough of them — erased all that.

“When they needed a basket,” Peele said, “they could get it.”

Of Winthrop's 25 field goals, two more than the Cougars produced, only two — one in each half — came off anything that wasn't a layup, dunk or in the lane. One was a 15-footer by Matt Morgan, the other a 12-foot off-balance jumper by Andre Jones.

They were zero for 13 on 3-pointers, which makes them 1 for 28 in their first two games.

Robinson (2 for 14), Reggie Middleton (1 for 5) and Jones (5 for 14) were a combined 8 for 33, numbers that look a lot like last year's. They missed eight 3-pointers, most of them good shots.

With the Cougars hitting 9 of 23 from behind the arc, they were able to offset Winthrop's dominance in other phases.

“We get beat by 12 and we took 22 more shots,” Peele said. “They got 48. The difference was the three-point line.”

Peele thought his offense produced more chances in the lane, but the Eagles didn't finish enough of them, and that put even more pressure on the defense.

Without getting some shots to drop in the first half, the Eagles found themselves down 30-29 at the half. And the Cougars opened the second half with some outside fireworks, hitting three consecutive 3-pointers and scoring 11 points in just over a minute and a half to go up 41-32.

The Cougars bumped the lead to 46-34 before the Eagles scratched back behind Andy Buechert, Morgan (10 points, five rebounds) and Jones (11 points).

When Jones stole a pass and went the length of the court for a dunk, the lead was slashed to 59-57 with 3:51 left. Seven seconds later, Cremins was calling time and calling “three.”

Goudelock knocked down the game-changing shot, and the Eagles' last six possessions netted zero points, three turnovers and a blocked shot.

“We've got to find a way to address it,” Peele said of the frigid shooting. “We're not shooting the ball well and people are playing us man-to-man.