Young Rock Hill students fill Coliseum, energize Winthrop basketball to skid-ending win
All of a sudden, as if they weren’t expecting it, the lights went out.
And those in the Winthrop Coliseum shrieked.
In front of a near-capacity “Education Day” crowd of elementary and middle school students from Rock Hill — who spent part of their day cheering on their city’s local college basketball team — the Eagles defeated Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, 93-73, Tuesday. The win snapped a four-game losing streak for Winthrop and ended its non-conference season on a positive note.
Education Day, as organizers called it on Tuesday, is an annual event when elementary and middle schools from the Rock Hill-area attend a morning Winthrop men’s basketball game. It is coordinated by the school district and the Winthrop athletic department — and it started four years ago.
“We came into the game after four losses in a row,” Winthrop’s Michael Anumba, who scored nine points, said postgame. “We were a bit disappointed in ourselves, and winning this game at home, with a big crowd of people watching, families watching, I feel like it was a big achievement for us.”
The Coliseum never got louder on Tuesday than when the lights went out — a moment that happens every home game, before a montage of Winthrop highlights layered over some pump-up music, and the announcement of the team’s starting lineup.
It came close, though.
Before tip-off, while kids were still receiving brown bags of lunch from their teachers — 11 a.m. is about when their lunchtime is, of course — the party had already started. Kids danced and sang any and every song, and they held up signs on 8-by-11 sheets of paper as if they’d created something that’d appear on ESPN’s College Gameday.
The dancing continued: They spun their imaginary lasso over their heads for Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” and ran in place when the “JuJu on Dat Beat” challenge and Migos’ “Walk It Like I Talk It” started to blare.
At the first media timeout, a pre-recorded head coach Pat Kelsey appeared on the stadium’s jumbotron: “You’re not allowed to be loud in school. But you can be loud in the Coliseum!”
The cheering wasn’t necessarily calculated: SIUE free throw attempts drew more cheers than Winthrop buckets — so much so that the outnumbered, regular Winthrop fans had to plug their ears with their fingers.
Kelsey’s son, Johnny “Ballgame” Kelsey, sat and cheered, too. But he was where he normally was: next to Adonis Arms, Keyshawn Hunter and Russell Jones (who missed his fourth consecutive game on Tuesday to injury). The elementary-school-aged Kelsey wore his trademarked, homemade Jones jersey on the team’s bench.
Mychal Frost, communications director for Rock Hill schools and lead organizer of the annual event, told The Herald at halftime what this event means to the community.
“We hope and believe this is an opportunity to expose almost 5,000 students to their hometown team, their hometown university,” Frost said. “Yes, it’s great to be a die-hard Tiger and a die-hard Gamecock, but the Eagles are here in town. And they need you, they need us to embrace the community.
“They’ve embraced us, and we’re going to be able to ‘Rock the Hill’ together.”
A Winthrop win
It was loud, yes — but the kids had plenty to cheer about.
Despite coming up a bit gimpy after driving on the first play and grimacing a bit all game, Chandler Vaudrin played one of his better games to date, knocking in 4-of-5 threes for 13 points and adding six rebounds and one assist.
And he had plenty of help early. Rock Hill native DJ Burns — a crowd favorite, it seemed — outsized and outplayed the array of smaller SIUE post defenders. He finished with a team-high 19 points, three rebounds and three assists.
“I don’t like when they double-team me, because I like to score, but when they double-team, it opens up so many opportunities to share the ball with my teammates, and that’s something that I’ve really tried to learn how to do,” Burns said.
“Being a post-scorer and big is something that draws a lot of attention from the other team, so having my teammates hit those shots was really big.”
Senior Josh Ferguson had another good shooting night and scored 12; Hunter Hale poured in 12 as well; and Kyle Zunic added a team-high six assists.
The Eagles jumped out to a 17-4 lead to start the game, but were countered with an 8-0 SIUE run. 17-12, Winthrop.
The game never got any closer.
What ensued was a refreshing perimeter scoring performance from a team which, coming into the game, shot less than 32 percent on the season. The Eagles shot 15-of-29 (51.7 percent) from three.
“The atmosphere at the game today was high-energy,” Kelsey said. “Anyone who knows me knows that I really dig high-energy. It’s sort of my deal. I don’t have many other deals, but I have my energy deal...
“And I thought our guys did their jobs by playing well and playing hard.”
Notable: A show for the future
When Coach Kelsey looked out to the sea of screaming kids, he didn’t see what the Education Day event was — he saw what it could become.
In other words, as Kelsey explained at length postgame, this event was equally about the present as it was his program’s future.
“I started making Xavier basketball mine when I was 6,” Kelsey said. “My dad took me to the old, crappy Schmidt Fieldhouse before they started playing at the Cincinnati Gardens. And then he sent me to Bob Staak’s basketball camp. And that was it. They won my mind and heart. I wanted to be a Xavier Musketeer.”
He continued the story, saying that he’d wait up for his father to come home on game nights and ask his father if he could drive him to the games. If Kelsey’s father couldn’t, Kelsey would ask his grandpa to take him.
He laughed as he finished the story, talking about a time his grandfather was driving him home after a game: “Then, in 1986, I made a half-court shot to win a trip to Hawaii, and I gave my trip to my grandma and grandpa — but it was the other grandma and grandpa...
“And he was like, ‘I’m sure they’ll enjoy it.”
Quotable: ‘It’s different, you know?’
Anumba on being in new role amid teammate injuries: “I am a little bit because Russell Jones got injured against Duke. When Chandler and Kyle aren’t in the game, I’m playing point guard. I have some flashbacks. When I was back home (overseas), I was the point guard. I enjoy it a little bit, but I still know my role.”
Burns, a Rock Hill native, on the crowd: “It was so fun to all the kids out there, and they were just cheering and having fun. It seemed like they didn’t have a care in the world.”
This story was originally published December 17, 2019 at 1:31 PM.
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