Ready to watch Winthrop basketball in Rock Hill? You’ll have to wait until (at least) 2021

The Winthrop women’s and men’s basketball teams will play their home openers without fans.

Per a release posted to the Winthrop athletics website Thursday afternoon, the school will not host any spectators in the Winthrop Coliseum for the remainder of 2020 due to COVID-19 concerns, and it’s still to be determined if fans will be permitted to attend the season’s remaining home games in 2021.

This announcement impacts five games for now:

▪ Women’s basketball against USC Upstate (Dec. 17-18)

▪ Men’s basketball non-conference game against Furman (Dec. 19)

▪ Men’s basketball home-opening games against Campbell (Dec. 30-31)

Fan attendance will be reevaluated on a periodic basis, the release states.

How to watch in 2021

The release makes clear that Winthrop hasn’t yet decided on if it’ll host fans in Rock Hill’s Winthrop Coliseum in 2021.

However, it states that “should fans be permitted to attend” remaining home games, “all tickets will be sold on a single-game basis as a reduced capacity can be expected.” The release also states that ticket priority will be provided to Winthrop Eagle Club members, and that season ticket plans won’t be available for these games.

Fans who’ve already purchased season tickets, per the release, can:

1. Convert the ticket investment into a one-time tax-deductible contribution
   
   
2. Apply the ticket toward full investment in season tickets for 2021-22 basketball season
3. Or receive a full refund

All games will be streamed on ESPN+.

A season already disrupted by the novel coronavirus

Last week, Winthrop athletics halted basketball activities after multiple “Tier 1 personnel” — athletes, coaches, staff and managers — tested positive for COVID-19, which potentially threatened its trip to the state of Kentucky for the Wade Houston Tipoff Classic. (The team has since announced that it will be making the trip to Louisville; the Eagles will be playing three games instead of the five they originally had planned.)

Winthrop only has eight home games after the start of the new year — and they’re against four teams: The Eagles play Longwood in back-to-back contests Jan. 14 and 15; Hampton Jan. 24 and 25; Gardner-Webb Feb. 4 and 5; and UNC Asheville Feb. 18 and 19.

This story was originally published November 19, 2020 at 5:10 PM.

Alex Zietlow

The Herald

Alex Zietlow writes about sports and the ways in which they intersect with life in York, Chester and Lancaster counties for The Herald, where he has been an editor and reporter since August 2019. Zietlow has won nine S.C. Press Association awards in his career, including First Place finishes in Feature Writing, Sports Enterprise Writing and Education Beat Reporting. He also received two Top-10 awards in the 2021 APSE writing contest and was nominated for the 2022 U.S. Basketball Writers Association’s Rising Star award for his coverage of the Winthrop men’s basketball team.