Winthrop off to best start in Big South history, its undefeated season hopes intact
Winthrop’s Micheal Anumba stretched his hands as far as he could to contest the Charleston Southern 3-pointer that would’ve ended Winthrop’s historic run — and the ball sailed short and clanked off the rim.
The buzzer sounded. The game was over. Winthrop had escaped, 78-76, with a Big South win on the road Tuesday, and in doing so, it kept alive a winning streak that might one day take the program to heights it has never gone to before.
“I told our guys, ‘It ain’t going to be easy,’” Winthrop head coach Pat Kelsey told a reporter from ESPN postgame, his voice hoarse. “And they’re going to be just like this for the next couple months.”
With every win, the Winthrop men’s basketball team inches closer and closer to what’s starting to feel like its rightful place among the nation’s college basketball canopy. And that’s true even after Tuesday’s game — one where the Eagles had to overcome a rare second-half deficit and a 33-point performance from CSU’s preseason Big South Player of the Year Phlandrous Fleming.
After all, the Eagles are still making history.
Winthrop completed its two-win sweep of Big South Conference foe Charleston Southern on the road after wins on Monday and Tuesday. Their victories — the first an 85-69 beatdown — mark the first-ever time a Big South school has started 9-0; the continuation of the best start in Winthrop basketball history; and the second-straight year the Eagles jumped out to 4-0 in conference play.
Coming into Tuesday, Winthrop was ranked as the 37th best team in the nation, per the rankings of the official NCAA Evaluation Tool (NET). That’s ahead of several nationally renowned programs that aren’t necessarily having bad years, including Virginia (5-2), UCONN (4-1) and UCLA (7-2).
The Eagles’ stock might drop a little because Tuesday’s margin was close — a maddening reality for those who know how difficult it is to win any college basketball game on the road, particularly on back-to-back days — but their résumé remains peered by few: The Big South juggernauts from Rock Hill are now one of five total teams who’ve played more than five games and are still undefeated, joining top-ranked Gonzaga, Baylor, Michigan and Drake. They also haven’t lost since February 2020, a few weeks before the Eagles won the Big South Conference tournament and earned a coveted bid into the 2020 NCAA Tournament that never took place because of the threat of COVID-19.
What makes Winthrop’s path to a top-25 ranking imaginable — and perhaps equally difficult — is the fact that it’ll be expected to win the rest of its games until March.
The last time Winthrop was ranked in the top-25 was in the 2006-07 season, when the Eagles finished 22nd in the AP and USA TODAY/ESPN Coaches Poll, a school spokesman confirmed with The Herald. At the time, the Eagles were the first-ever Big South school ranked.
Winthrop wins in different ways at Charleston Southern
In Game 1, Winthrop played as well as it had all season. Chandler Vaudrin, who leads the nation in triple-doubles this year (with two) and whose 6-7 frame makes him a matchup nightmare for opposing point guards, had eight points, eight assists and eight rebounds. Only one Eagle shot more than 10 times (Adonis Arms shot 11), and all 12 Eagles who played scored at least two points.
In Game 2, although Vaudrin notched his 1,000-career-point milestone early, this game belonged to Charles Falden. In 26 minutes, he hit three 3-pointers and led the team with 17 points — three of which came on a pivotal play in the final two minutes: The senior guard from Richmond missed a three, collected his own miss, attacked the basket on the right side and finished an and-one to put Winthrop up four. (He also drew the game’s final foul, and although he missed the first free throw, he made the second and gave the Eagles a two-point lead they wouldn’t relinquish.)
The fact that the Eagles can win in multiple ways is part of what makes their undefeated season aspirations compelling. And they didn’t even pull out all their tricks this series: Sophomore forward DJ Burns — Winthrop’s Big South Freshman of the Year in 2019-20 and best recruit coming out of high school to ever play at the Rock Hill school — was largely a non-factor in both games, playing a total of 22 minutes and scoring nine points.
What’s next?
Winthrop is scheduled to play at home in back-to-back contests Thursday, Jan. 14, and Friday, Jan. 15, against Longwood.
This story was originally published January 5, 2021 at 6:08 PM.
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