Winthrop coach Pat Kelsey thinks the world of Eagles freshmen — and expects it, too
Late in the fourth quarter of the Winthrop men’s basketball team’s eventual 26-point win over USC Upstate last week, head coach Pat Kelsey couldn’t get the attention of one of his players.
Kelsey called after him. He took two hard steps toward the scorer’s table, closer to where his team was running back on defense after a made 3-point attempt. The jumper he’d just seen was clean. Wide open. As far as the casual fan knew, Kelsey’s play-call against a 2-3 zone worked just as it should have.
Still, though — Kelsey screamed.
“Jamal! Jamal!!” Kelsey yelled, trying to get freshman guard Jamal King to turn around and face him before he ran back on defense. King was the one who assisted that specific 3-point bucket — finessing a pretty pass around the outstretched Spartan guards after splitting the two-guard front off the dribble. Kelsey vied for King’s attention for nearly 15 seconds.
To the onlooker unfamiliar with the intricacies of Winthrop’s playbook and Kelsey’s expectations, it looked as if King had done everything right. But given Kelsey’s reaction, that wasn’t the safest assumption.
Kelsey is a demanding coach and has been admittedly hard on King the past few weeks — similar to how hard he’s been on the rest of his newcomers: a crew of four true freshmen, a redshirt freshman transfer and two Division II transfers who have, in large part, led the Eagles to 10 straight wins and firm control of their destiny in the Big South.
Perhaps Kelsey, on that particular play, had seen something the crowd didn’t. But what was it?
After Winthrop’s next offensive possession — another made three — Kelsey started screaming at King again, still trying to get his freshman guard to look his way. King heard his coach this time and turned around.
Kelsey’s eyes widened, and he clapped his hands: “Nice pass!”
Yes — Kelsey was trying to pay King a compliment.
“He wants us to know,” King later said of the moment. “He’ll go out of his way. It doesn’t matter if it’s two plays, three plays, four plays after that. He’s going to tell us, ‘Good job.’”
Kelsey recalled the play after the game.
“What I have to do sometimes as a coach and as a leader is to catch them doing something right,” Kelsey said. “It’s hard being a freshman in our program. It just is…
“I’m relentless on those guys.”
King: ‘I know, Coach’
It’s no secret that this Winthrop team has been shaped by its class of new faces.
Hunter Hale, a graduate transfer from Grand Valley State, is the team’s leading scorer. Chandler Vaudrin, who had to sit out for the Eagles last year after transferring from Walsh University, plays the most minutes and leads the team in assists. DJ Burns, a redshirt freshman transfer from Tennessee, has brought a conventional, back-to-the-basket interior presence that supplements this team’s outside scoring tendencies. The list can go on — from King to Chase Claxton to Russell Jones Jr., the team’s spark plug who’s finding his rhythm after suffering an ankle injury in late November.
And it’s also public knowledge that Kelsey thinks the world of them — and expects nothing less.
He’s quick to substitute Hale out of games for taking quick, errant shots that don’t come in the flow of the offense. After the game against Presbyterian, Kelsey noted that he’s challenged Burns to “not let his offense affect his defense.”
The night before Winthrop’s game against USC Upstate, in fact, Kelsey sent King a text message: “I just felt bad that I’ve been coaching him so hard,” Kelsey said. “But I told him: ‘I’m still going to do it. But just know that I still love ya.’”
And he did, still, coach him hard: Against USC Upstate on one defensive possession, King left his man — a “green-green” guy, as his coaching staff labeled him for being someone who’s “a 3-point shooter first, 3-point shooter second” — open behind the arc.
“There was already somebody at the scorer’s table waiting for him,” Kelsey said. “And as soon as I could get him — (King said) ‘I know, Coach: Green-green.’”
Big South and beyond
King acknowledged that he’s been playing more and more each game, earning the trust of his coaches, but he sees his role as primarily being supportive to his team this season. He also gave insight on how his team operated after wins — one that came off more honest than the player-speak words look on paper.
“We don’t talk about any of our wins,” King said. “We beat Radford. ... None of us have talked about that because we’re so focused on that next game.”
Once reporters had no more questions for him after his team’s win over USC Upstate, King slipped out of the media room in Winthrop Coliseum.
Winthrop has a two-game lead over the Big South field. The team is slated, per ESPN’s most recent NCAA Tournament predictor, to be a No. 14 seed.
And yet, as King insists, the newcomer-led Eagles won’t look back on what they’ve done. Instead, they’ll turn to where their next quest will take them, doing whatever they can to deliver a championship to a coach who demands the world.
Upcoming schedule
Opponent? Charleston Southern.
When? Thursday at 7:30 p.m.
Where? CSU Fieldhouse in North Charleston, S.C.
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