From attendance to free throws, here are 8 New Year’s resolutions for Winthrop basketball
A new year marks an opportunity to take stock of your shortcomings and achievements, to make deliberate adjustments for the better — and that’s particularly true of basketball teams like Winthrop that will embark on a “new season” of only conference games the rest of 2021-22.
So let’s take stock, shall we?
The Eagles (7-6) are heading into January with a winning record, one made possible thanks to a 78-40 win over Division II Converse College at home on New Year’s Eve. They were led in the win Friday by some guys who’ve emerged as of late. Among them: Forward DJ Burns (20 points), Russell Jones Jr. (15) and Chase Claxton (10) — who notched his first career double-double (with 10 rebounds).
The win over Converse didn’t reveal anything about this Winthrop team we didn’t already know. The good news, though: We already know a lot.
We know Winthrop, a team without any true freshmen, can run inferior competition out of the gym. Three of its seven wins this season have come against non-Division I teams — all with 30-plus point margins.
We know Winthrop, a team with plenty of NCAA tournament institutional knowledge, has a combination of buttons that, when pushed, send it to another level. Take the overtime win over Mercer in November, when the Eagles scored nine points in the game’s 51 seconds to pull out a statement win in the team’s second game of the year. Or take the 85-80 win over Furman in December, a win that might not have come if it weren’t for the game-within-the-game that emerged between the Winthrop and Furman big men. (You can also count Winthrop’s commanding win over Washington in this bucket. After all, conventional wisdom — and history — says a Pac-12 team should pretty much always beat a Big South team. And that didn’t happen.)
We know more, too — learning from the wins that might’ve felt like losses (Hartford) and from the losses that might’ve felt like wins (Washington State).
“I don’t think anything really changes because of the New Year,” head coach Mark Prosser told reporters postgame Friday. “We have the same expectations and goals and things like that across the board. ... It gets a little bit more difficult now, with people who are your natural rivals. And, you know, we’ve played a good schedule, but it’s a little more personal when it’s against teams in the league. And we just gotta be sure we’re prepared for that.”
So as far as making deliberate adjustments for the better? Here are eight resolutions that the Eagles would be smart to make and implement in 2022.
1. Make more free throws. Free throws.
For a team that shoots so well from the field (47.3%) and the 3-point line (37.7%), the Eagles aren’t that great from the free-throw line. They’re shooting 68.7% on the year, 229th in the country among Division I schools — and in important games have shot as well from beyond the arc as they have from the line.
The good news? Winthrop has a ton of free-throw attempts — 35 a game. (They already make 12.9 free throws a game.) A slight percentage improvement, in other words, would go a long way.
2. Continue to value Micheal Anumba, Russ Jones and Chase Claxton.
Prosser and his coaching staff value Micheal Anumba, Russell Jones and Chase Claxton. Prosser’s said as much in postgame interviews and in playing time as of late: Anumba has started every game and is practically tied for most minutes per game on the team with 26.3. (Cory Hightower is averaging 26.8 minutes per game.) Claxton, after being the fourth player off the bench at the beginning of the year, is now playing 19.2 minutes a game. And Jones is averaging 18.3 minutes a game.
This is striking. After all, these guys were recruited by Prosser’s predecessor, Pat Kelsey — a coach known for being enamored with the overlooked and undersized (all of which describe Anumba and Claxton and Jones out of high school). But Prosser has played them all. A lot. And deservedly so.
(Defensive stars are famously low maintenance, but I’ve knocked around a few ideas to make it so their impacts are valued further. One rough-draft thought: Paint the two left corners along the baseline — Anumba’s favorite spot on the court — and name them “Anumba’s Trey-Cation.” Don’t like the name? Not feasible? Just a generally bad idea? OK I’ll keep thinking.)
3. Get people to the Coliseum.
This is a responsibility the whole Winthrop athletic department shares, from interim athletic director Chuck Rey on down, and it’s a problem that isn’t new. But it’s still urgent.
The lowest fan turnout in the past 15 years when fans were allowed to watch games live was 1,239 in 2015. That might change in 2021: Through five home games, Winthrop has accumulated 5,241 in official attendance, an average of 1,048 attendees a game. There are eight scheduled home games left in the regular season.
4. Keep DJ Burns out of foul trouble.
Winthrop is a team too deep and too old to be labeled as one that “goes as DJ Burns goes.” But the Eagles need him to play a lot in order to be great — and that requires him staying out of foul trouble.
Burns is averaging 16.7 points and 20 minutes a game. Those two averages are stunning, particularly considering the fact that his first two years in Rock Hill rarely saw Burns play more than 15 minutes in even the most important contests. The only thing that’s kept him off the court has been early foul trouble, something that’s plagued him and his team in the few Winthrop losses that should’ve been wins. (Think Winthrop’s first loss of the season against Middle Tennessee State — a game when the big man recorded two fouls in the first 1:43 and had to sit out for a big chunk of the first half because of it.)
5. Unlock Cory Hightower.
Winthrop’s starting stretch power forward has the talent to win Winthrop a game or two later this season. He’s kept the offense afloat in the first halves of games when the rest of the offense struggled — like against SEC opponent Vanderbilt, when he hit five threes in the first half to keep the halftime margin 35-32.
The Eagles haven’t quite unlocked him yet, which is wild to think about in and of itself. (He’s averaging 10.6 points and 5.7 rebounds a game.) But his emergence would give the Eagles a frontcourt the rest of the Big South would struggle to guard in 2022.
6. ‘Mark! Language!’
Prosser has been called for a technical foul on two separate occasions in the first half of his first season at Winthrop. They are his first techs of his Division I coaching career — a career that has included stints at Western Carolina for three years as a head coach and several years as an assistant at Wofford and Bucknell.
Whether he “earned” those technicals or not — and according to Prosser’s countenance of both, he didn’t — it’s still wild. I say this because Prosser is markedly easy going and is someone who you can’t imagine cursing at a George Carlin comedy show. All this makes for an easy fix. But for good measure: “Mark! Language!”
7. Keep Josh Corbin on the rise
After beginning the season as a starter and playing starter minutes, Josh Corbin saw his role slowly diminish in the middle of non-conference play. He didn’t play at all in arguably Winthrop’s most impressive win of the season against Furman.
That has since started to shift again: He scored a team-high 19 points in 28 minutes against Carver College earlier this month and was the first man off the bench against Converse. For as many threes Winthrop shoots, adding another knockdown shooter would be useful.
8. Make the NCAA tournament.
Winthrop won’t overwhelm its Big South peers with its talent like it did last year. It doesn’t churn out a 12-man rotation of guys, all of whom arguably would be able to start on other Big South teams.
But the Eagles still have NCAA tournament expectations and the talent to deliver on all the instrumental benefits (e.g. increased exposure, a financial boost, etc.) that make the NCAA tournament magical for mid-major basketball programs across the country.
“I haven’t really thought about it,” Claxton said postgame when asked about his New Year’s resolution. “But I wanna win the Big South and win a couple games in the tournament.”
A couple?
“Yes, a few, a few.”
So do something Winthrop has never done before and then some.
“Yeah,” Claxton said with a concealed smile. “Make history.”
This story was originally published December 31, 2021 at 4:00 PM.
.jpeg)