However ugly it was, Winthrop basketball’s win over Campbell made program history
Winthrop didn’t score a field goal in the game’s last four minutes and 29 seconds, and the team needed every 50 — yes, fifty — of its free throw attempts to outlast Campbell, 84-83, on Wednesday afternoon in the Coliseum. But the Eagles did it.
They made history.
Winthrop is now 6-0 for the first-ever time as a program — a feat that isn’t qualified by forgettably easy wins or inexplicable over-achievement: The Eagles have asserted their dominance in three double-digit wins — one of which being against mid-major power Furman in Rock Hill — and after Wednesday, they’re now 3-0 in the Big South for the third straight season.
“Those things are 1 million miles from my mentality, my psyche,” Winthrop head coach Pat Kelsey told reporters after the game via Zoom video call, when asked about if a performance like Wednesday’s threatens any “special year” aspirations for this season. “Those types of things are things for you guys to write about. That’s the farthest thing from what we think about, what we talk about. A season is a lifetime. (Former Xavier and Wake Forest coach) Skip Prosser used to say that all the time: ‘You play good (sic). You play bad. There are ups, there are downs’... It’s this journey that we’re on, and that’s what we celebrate.”
Wednesday’s win didn’t look like the others that came before it, though.
The troubles started early. Winthrop tied its largest deficit of the season when it went down five points with 10:43 to play in the first half. This happened in part because Campbell used a three-quarter-court press which transformed into a matchup zone that seemed to slow down the fast-paced Eagles — who led the conference in points per game coming into Wednesday’s contest.
Winthrop stabilized to close out the half, clinging to a tenuous 39-33 lead, but the team still wasn’t playing like itself for a variety of reasons.
- Winthrop ended the half 4-of-17 from three, shooting 33% from the field.
- DJ Burns was playing well, shooting 3-of-3 from the field, but he was in foul trouble.
- And point guard Chandler Vaurdrin — the team’s proverbial engine who once led the country in triple-doubles this season (with one) and who is still among the nation’s assist leaders — was on his way to having his worst game of the season (which still wasn’t terrible: his statline was 17 points on 3-10 shooting from the field; eight rebounds; five assists; five turnovers).
“We weren’t very efficient on offense,” Kelsey said, adding that the turnover numbers reflected that inefficiency. “That’s probably the most frustrating thing because we can’t score if we don’t shoot.”
The Eagles emerged from the halftime break a bit sluggish as well: They allowed a 12-5 run to give Campbell a 46-45 lead, and they even let the margin get as close as four with just over seven minutes left and then as close as one after Campbell’s Austin McCullough hit a three as the final buzzer went off.
You could tell Winthrop was out of sync on Wednesday without looking at a box score, too: When Burns went out of the game for good at the 11:14 mark, there were moments when the Eagles’ offense was Vaudrin, the team’s 6-foot-7 point guard, backing down his defender from 3-point line. Also, there were missed layups. Head-scratching turnovers.
The only pleasant surprise was an oddly solid performance from the free throw line (37-of-50) that, as aforementioned, preserved the home team’s win.
Given all of its deficiencies that no one knew it had, though, Winthrop still prevailed on Wednesday, somehow — keeping intact the special season that the team once seemed destined to have.
“Like I said, credit Campbell, I’m never going to be the one who comes on here and says, ‘Hey we just didn’t play well,’” said Kelsey, who said he’ll head from the Zoom press conference he had set up with reporters postgame into his office to gameplan with his coaching staff for tomorrow’s afternoon game against the Camels again. “Well, we didn’t play well because of our opponent, and give them credit.
“But I’m happy to come away with the win, as ugly as it may be.”
This story was originally published December 30, 2020 at 6:47 PM.
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