Where is Winthrop? Meet the 12 seed playing Villanova in NCAA tournament first round
The Eagles will finally have their moment in the sun.
The Winthrop basketball team (23-1), which won a Big South tournament title last year but was deprived of a March Madness experience because of the then-emerging COVID-19 pandemic, will be a 12 seed in the 2021 NCAA tournament. The team traveled to Indiana on Saturday and watched its seed be revealed on national television on Sunday, during CBS’s Selection Show broadcast.
The Eagles will play Villanova (16-6, 11-4 Big East) at 9:59 p.m. Friday in the South Region. The game will take place at Farmers Coliseum in Indianapolis.
The Wildcats last played March 11, when they lost by one to eventual Big East tournament champion Georgetown. Villanova has won two national championships since 2016, and it was the preseason third-ranked team in the country. That said, the team is battling attrition: Senior starting guard Collin Gillespie suffered a season-ending injury earlier this season, and key guard Justin Moore suffered a “severe” ankle injury earlier this month.
“Winthrop is winning that game,” CBS analyst Seth Davis said on the broadcast.
With a win, Winthrop will play the winner of No. 4 Purdue and No. 13 North Texas for a shot at the Sweet 16.
Locking in a 12 seed delivers the Winthrop athletic department $75,000, per the Big South’s Basketball Incentive Plan — and that’s in addition to the $100,000 Winthrop earned after winning a Big South title.
All the NCAA tournament games will be played in Indiana, and mostly around Indianapolis, in what the NCAA has described as a controlled environment.
For those who are just now being introduced to the Eagles, here’s a quick rundown of who they are and where they’re from.
WHERE IS WINTHROP?
Winthrop is a public university in South Carolina founded in 1886. It’s located in Rock Hill, South Carolina, a growing town about 25 miles south of Charlotte that’s fiercely independent of its northern metropolis neighbor.
You’ve probably heard of Rock Hill: The city of about 75,000 people has produced an outsized share of the nation’s football talent, including current NFL headliners Jadeveon Clowney, Stephon Gilmore, Cordarrelle Patterson and several more. Six natives of York County, where Rock Hill sits, played in this past season’s College Football Playoff.
Rock Hill’s youth football prowess is inextricably linked with its identity. So much so, in fact, that The Herald’s late, beloved high school sports editor Barry Byers dubbed the city “Football City, USA” — a nickname that the city warmly embraced.
Rock Hill will also soon be home to the headquarters and practice facilities of the Carolina Panthers. (New Panthers owner David Tepper wore Winthrop gear while watching the Eagles win their 13th Big South championship earlier this month.)
Outside of sports, Rock Hill has been brought up in national conversations in other ways, both historically and recently: The city has a rich Civil Rights history, one led by a group known as the Friendship Nine who protested racial segregation and sparked a movement that’s still marching today. That history, in part, led Democratic presidential primary candidates to visit Rock Hill like it was a political cornerstone leading up to the 2020 election.
WINTHROP BASKETBALL’S 2020-21 NCAA RESUME
No Big South Conference team has ever earned an at-large bid into the NCAA tournament. But this team might’ve been deserving of one.
Winthrop (23-1, 17-1 Big South) had a run to remember this season: The Eagles burst out to the best start in program history (6-0) and then the best start in Big South history (9-0) — defeating Furman and NCAA-bound foe UNC Greensboro along the way. They continued their run into late January, peaking at 21 straight wins stemming from the end of last season and even earning an AP Top 25 vote this season, something that’s only happened twice in 15 years.
The team from Rock Hill has drawn attention in part because it uses an 11-man rotation:
The Eagles are led by Chandler Vaudrin, the team’s 6-foot-7, pass-first point guard. The lefty leads the country in triple-doubles this season (with three) and averages 12.2 points, 6.9 assists and 7.2 rebounds a game. The redshirt senior, who transferred from a Division II school in Ohio before arriving in Rock Hill, was named the Big South Player of the Year last month. (Here’s a feature The Herald ran on him earlier this week about his unconventional path to Winthrop.)
They’re also led by DJ Burns, a 6-foot-9 center whose delicate touch around the basket makes him among the best back-to-basket scorers in mid-major basketball. The redshirt sophomore, who scored 22 points on 11-of-12 shooting in the Big South championship game, gives Winthrop an interior presence — a dimension and luxury most guard-heavy Big South teams don’t have. The Rock Hill native spent the 2018-19 season at Tennessee and transferred to the Eagles’ program before last season, making him the highest ranked recruit coming out of high school to ever land at Winthrop.
These two are then complemented by a slew of perimeter scorers (Charles Falden, Adonis Arms, Josh Corbin, Micheal Anumba, Kyle Zunic); an always-fun-to-watch, 5-foot-7 point guard (Russell Jones Jr.); and three hybrid big men (Jamal King, Kelton Talford and Chase Claxton).
WHO IS WINTHROP’S COACH?
Winthrop is coached by Pat Kelsey.
The Cincinnati native and protege of the late, legendary Skip Prosser is in his ninth season at the Winthrop helm. Notably, last spring, national media reports said Kelsey was among a short list of candidates to replace Danny Manning as Wake Forest’s head coach. (That was the only head coaching change in any Power 5 conference this past offseason.)
Kelsey has notched 186 wins as a head coach, good for fifth-best all-time in the Big South and second-best ever at Winthrop. Kelsey makes $247,150 in base salary, per his current contract obtained by The Herald on Monday, and regularly obtains performance-based bonuses — including a $10,000 bonus for making this year’s NCAA tournament.
WINTHROP AND GREGG MARSHALL
Winthrop has a reasonably long history in March (seen below). A lot of that has to do with Gregg Marshall, Winthrop’s coach from 1999-2007 who won seven Big South titles and engineered one of the greatest moments in Rock Hill sports history when his team upset Notre Dame in the first round of the 2007 NCAA tournament.
Marshall went to Wichita State (and the Final Four) after Winthrop. In November, though, Marshall resigned as head coach of the Shockers — nearly three months into an investigation by the school after allegations were made public that Marshall physically and verbally abused players and coaching staff members.
WINTHROP’S NCAA TOURNAMENT HISTORY
Listed by year, seed, tournament result
1999: No. 16 seed, lost to Auburn in NCAA first round
2000: No. 14 seed, lost to Oklahoma in first round
2001: No. 16 seed, lost to Northwestern State in play-in game
2002: No. 16 seed, lost to Duke in first round
2005: No. 14 seed, lost to Gonzaga in first round
2006: No. 15 seed, lost to Tennessee in first round
2007: No. 11 seed, defeated Notre Dame in first round, then lost to Oregon
2008: No. 13 seed, lost to Washington State in first round
2010: No. 16 seed, lost to Arkansas-Pine Bluff in play-in game
2017: No. 13 seed, lost to Butler in first round
Note: The team won the Big South last year with a 24-10 record, but didn’t appear in the 2020 NCAA tournament after it was canceled.
This story was originally published March 14, 2021 at 6:19 PM with the headline "Where is Winthrop? Meet the 12 seed playing Villanova in NCAA tournament first round."
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