After Duke loss, Winthrop team said it doesn’t believe in moral victories. Why not?

There was a sense, with just under four minutes remaining in the game, that Winthrop belonged on the court.

The Eagles (4-4) — who ultimately lost their fourth game of the season on Friday night, 83-70 — were down seven points to top-ranked Duke in Cameron Indoor Stadium.

But it didn’t feel anomalous. It didn’t feel as if this were an inferior team channeling a special performance.

The Eagles had no heroes: By the end of the game, only Hunter Hale scored more than 10 points. Three others had nine points. One had eight.

They weren’t shooting particularly well: The Eagles finished 6 of 21 from three — which, for a team that relies so much on its backcourt for scoring and playmaking, isn’t favorable. They shot less than 50 percent from the free throw line for the fourth time this season.

And yet, they were here, with a chance — a chance that much of the country wrote off as soon as the final buzzer two nights ago sounded to Stephen F. Austin high stepping off the court.

“I told my guys after the game: ‘If you would’ve told me we’d be neck and neck in the rebounding battle, and that we’d only turn the ball over 13 times, I’d say I’d take my chances,’” Winthrop head coach Pat Kelsey said after the game. “Sure enough, it put us in a position with the last four minutes to have a chance to win the game.”

Isn’t the fact that they were this close, in of itself, a victory?

Maybe not. But there’s more to tell.

Entire Winthrop team contributes

Perhaps the way the Eagles got to that point warrants praise. They didn’t seem to deviate from their script as a team.

For starters, come the first media timeout, nine Winthrop players had seen the court. A new name popped up in every big play: There was the sequence when Charles Falden dove for a loose ball, ripped it away from his Duke defender and scooped it to Hunter Hale who found Chandler Vaudrin who gave a no-look pass to a wide open Josh Ferguson under the basket.

There was DJ Burns’s pair of backdowns and floats over the taller defenders. There was Russell Jones’ two straight layups right before the media timeout. There was Kyle Zunic’s drive and no look bounce pass to an open Chase Claxton, who finished despite getting hit mid-air.

Come halftime, Winthrop trailed the top-ranked Blue Devils by seven, 42-35. And they were expecting to be there.

“Going into every game, I think we can win,” said Chandler Vaudrin, who finished with nine points, seven assists and six rebounds. “(Duke’s) a very prestigious school, but at the end of the day, they put their shorts on the same way we do. They tie their shoes the same way.”

Winthrop cut the game’s margin closer in the second half, no individual outshining the team. After two Michael Anumba free throws with 9:45 minutes remaining, the Eagles were within four.

Duke flexed its muscles down the stretch — its Vernon Carey using his size to draw fouls against Burns; its Joey Baker hitting a pair of threes on back-to-back possessions to all but seal the game.

And despite the Eagles getting good shots, including a pair of Vaudrin layups that couldn’t fall and an open Hale three-point attempt that clunked off the right rim, they couldn’t keep up with the Blue Devils.

“I feel like there were just a couple big plays late,” said senior forward Josh Ferguson, who finished with nine points and 1 of 5 from three. “We were there, contesting it. It was just good shots. Execution-wise, things like that? We just didn’t make the shots we needed to make.”

‘After wins and losses’

When asked postgame if he believed in moral victories, or if he could discern a win from this game, Kelsey shook his head.

“I’m not a guy that really counts moral victories,” Kelsey said. “I think that team the other day, Stephen F. Austin proved that you could come in here and win this game.

“It’s not that we really needed convincing. We have a group of guys that went into a top-15 venue several weeks ago and won a game on their floor, so we didn’t come in here — like my mentor Skip Prosser used to say — like our ‘senior class to our nation’s capital.’ We came in here to try to win the game.”

To Kelsey, and for the rest of this team, it didn’t matter that they were in a position to win. It didn’t matter how they got there.

They were where they expected to be — and there are no justified failures if you’re where you belong.

Well after the final buzzer sounded, the Winthrop locker room was almost empty. Anumba was taking a phone call while he was putting on his backpack. Jones — whose ankle was stepped on with 1:21 left in the game, and was in so much pain that he had to be carried off the court with a towel over his head — was adjusting his crutches.

And Claxton, who went a perfect 4 of 4 from the field, was already thinking about his plans for the rest of the night — in Winthrop Coliseum, after the two-and-a-half-hour drive back, getting some shots up until early in the morning.

Why?

“I mean, overall, I’m shooting about 58 percent from the free throw line this year, and I’m trying to develop more a 3-point game, help the team more with spacing and everything like that, so I go to the gym every chance I get,” Clayton said.

He added, noting that victories, for this team, is dictated by the markings on the final scoreboard: “There usually is a lot of us in there — after wins and losses.”

This story was originally published November 29, 2019 at 11:46 PM.