Eagles to face Coastal for Big South title

Winthrop’s defensive effort Saturday afternoon made Longwood look it was playing through sludge.

Winthrop’s offense-smothering 71-58 win sets up the school’s 13th Big South Conference tournament championship game Sunday afternoon at 12:30 p.m., and second in a row after falling to Coastal Carolina last year in the final. The Eagles will face Coastal Carolina again this year.

“We just talked about how we felt in the locker room last year when we went home in second place,” said Eagles coach Pat Kelsey, whose program is 10-2 all-time in Big South title deciders. “We have that opportunity again now. We’re excited for that opportunity.”

No. 5 seed Winthrop (19-12) held Longwood (11-23) to 35 percent shooting Saturday. The No. 9 Lancers, playing their third game in as many days, shot 23 percent in the first half when a late spurt helped the Eagles go up by 10 points. Longwood got the deficit into single digits once the rest of the game.

“With a one-day turnaround the focus is defense,” said senior guard Andre Smith, one of four Eagles in double digits scoring. “Everything we talked about before the game was defense.”

In Longwood’s upset of top-seed Charleston Southern Friday, Shaq Johnson scored 22 points, grabbed 14 rebounds and blocked five shots.

But Johnson was held scoreless in the first half Saturday and turned the ball over five times in the first 20 minutes as Winthrop’s back-line defense clamped down on him.

Longwood coach Jayson Gee had talked with Johnson Friday night and Saturday morning about how Winthrop might try to stop him defensively. Gee figured that Winthrop would sag four players and send one defender to pick up Johnson on the perimeter. But that didn’t materialize.

“I didn’t realize they were gonna sag their whole team,” Gee said.

The sagging defense left room beyond the arc. Lancer guards Quincy Taylor and Leron Fisher were 9-of-14 from 3-point range and each scored 23 points, combining for 46 of their team’s 58.

Winthrop’s scoring was more balanced, sophomore Keon Johnson leading with 15, Keon Moore adding 14, and Xavier Cooks and Smith getting 11.

With the interior gummed up, Longwood made one 2-point field goal in the first half, a desperation shot clock beater from about 19 feet by Taylor. Winthrop held the Lancers to 23 percent shooting and Taylor’s answered prayer was their only field goal of the last 10 minutes, 51 seconds.

Winthrop might have felt like it should have led by more, but the Eagles shot 31 percent. Still, they led 30-20 at the half thanks to 3s in the last minute by Smith, who missed his first seven shots, and Cooks, whose shot on a kick-out pass from Moore just beat the halftime buzzer.

“Sometimes you just have to grind out a win like that in tournament play,” Kelsey said. “When you take pride in your defense, as these guys do, you can withstand droughts.”

A Longwood bucket cut the lead to 40-30 early in the second half, but the Eagles produced another scoring burst. Keon Johnson finished at the rim with a strong left-handed scoop and Jarad Scott followed up his own miss with a bucket to make it 44-30 and forced a Longwood timeout.

The Eagles beat Longwood on the backboards 41-30, leading to a 19-4 second chance scoring advantage, and shot 57 percent in the second half. Both were indicators of dead Lancer legs.

“That first 20 minutes we were getting after them and I thought we wore down,” Gee said. “I never could get a third guard to step up. There was so much pressure on my two guards and I thought they wore down and weren’t able to defend.”

Winthrop withstood Longwood’s last deep breath. Three straight Eagle turnovers led to easy Lancer buckets, Fisher’s layup off a steal cutting Winthrop’s lead to 55-47 with 6 minutes, 59 seconds to play.

But just like Friday when Winthrop fought off several runs by Radford, the Eagles regrouped and rattled off seven unanswered points to restore order.

Moore drilled a 3 with the help of staggered screens, before his Keon, Johnson, turned a pilfer pass into a layup, while drawing the foul. His free throw and Smith’s later free throw gave Winthrop a 62-47 lead with about five minutes to go.

Longwood’s Fisher said Presbyterian and Charleston Southern both made runs in the first two rounds that the Lancers answered, but Saturday Winthrop “just had more runs than us.”

It was a big step for Longwood‘s program to win two tournament games and reach a semifinal in Gee’s second season at the school. Winthrop can take an even bigger step on Sunday with an NCAA Tournament bid on the line.

"It’s a different approach to how we’re going to approach the next day," said Winthrop’s Johnson, referring to last season’s loss to Coastal.

Asked to clarify, Smith, a true acolyte of his coach’s fundamental basketball beliefs, got Kelsey to chuckle.

“I think we need to stress defense even more,” he said.

This story was originally published March 10, 2015 at 4:58 PM with the headline "Eagles to face Coastal for Big South title."