Winthrop will be a 2 seed in the Big South tournament. Can the Eagles go all the way?
The Winthrop Eagles had clinched the No. 2 seed in the Big South tournament before they’d played their penultimate regular season game on Thursday night.
But that didn’t stop them from putting on a show.
Winthrop (20-8, 13-2 Big South) played perhaps its best game of the year to date in front of its home crowd in Rock Hill on Thursday night, crushing a USC Upstate team, 89-59, that took Winthrop to overtime less than a month ago.
The Eagles shot a remarkable 53.7% from the floor and held USC Upstate to 37.9% from the field. They hit 16 3s— the team’s season-high and one off Winthrop’s Division I single-game record — and saw double-digit scoring efforts by five guys: Pat Good (13), Sin’Cere McMahon (13), Kelton Talford (20) and Cory Hightower (22).
A game like Thursday night warrants a look into Winthrop’s near future.
Here are five notes to consider before the Eagles end their regular season at home on Saturday and then begin their quest for a third consecutive Big South conference championship next week in Bojangles Coliseum in Charlotte.
5 notes to consider
1. Winthrop isn’t deep. Making a run in this year’s Big South tournament for Winthrop will require winning three games in three days. (Three games in 52 hours, to be exact.) Recently, the Eagles have thrived in these tight turnarounds. They particularly did so last year, when they earned more 20-plus-point wins (3) than they had all regular season en route to winning the 2021 Big South title.
But this year’s team is a bit different.
After beginning the year remarkably deep, Winthrop now only dresses out 10 players. That number has dwindled since the beginning of the season. Toneari Lane, a Winthrop sophomore and Pat Kelsey recruit, hasn’t played a game this season and by all indications is taking a redshirt season. Cameron Whiteside looks to be doing the same. And earlier this month, Winthrop lost two rotation players to “personal reasons” — Josh Corbin and Jamal King, both of whom were at one point important contributors this year.
It’s worth noting that a nine-man rotation is still deep for a Big South team. But it’s not necessarily deep for Winthrop.
2. Winthrop is old. It’s well-documented: The Eagles are one of only a few teams in Division I college basketball who do not have a true freshman on their roster. Most of the team has experience winning a conference tournament. Winthrop returners — DJ Burns, Mike Anumba, Kelton Talford, Chase Claxton — do. So does graduate transfer guard Pat Good, who led East Tennessee State to a Southern Conference championship in 2020.
It’s worth noting, too, that Drew Buggs was on a Missouri team that made the NCAA tournament in 2021.
Get old and stay old, tournament experts tend to say. And the Eagles have.
“It can’t hurt,” head coach Mark Prosser said when asked whether being old will be a positive next week. “It’s new for us, right. We haven’t had a neutral site conference tournament before. So that’ll be fun, and there will be some novelty to that. But we do have a lot of guys who’ve been around. We have guys in their sixth year, we have guys in their fourth year, and obviously we have no true freshman. It’s been fun to see how locked in they’ve been down the stretch.
“I think we’re getting better systematically, we’re trusting what we’re doing a little bit more. And they’re really playing well together, celebrating one another’s successes as they’ve gotten closer over the year. So I think that, on top of the experience, hopefully makes us a tough out in the conference.”
3. There’s only one more game in Rock Hill. Winthrop hasn’t yet lost in Rock Hill. The team is 12-0 at home (including Thursday night), and in previous years, they’d be able to carry that credential into the Big South tournament. But not this year, with the tournament being at a neutral site in Charlotte. Will the Eagles be able to carve out a home atmosphere — a home veil of invincibility— in Bojangles Coliseum?
Junior guard Russ Jones Jr. told reporters that he’s confident going into those neutral site games next week. But he also is cherishing his last few games of the season in the Coliseum.
“It’s going to be a different (environment) in the Bojangles Coliseum,” Jones said. “But I’m excited for it. It’s an arena, a new venue that I’ve never played at, so I’m embracing that. But of course we would’ve wanted it at home if possible, everybody in Rock Hill coming to celebrate with us.”
4. The Eagles have played everyone tight. Anyone can beat anyone in the Big South conference this year, and the Eagles have made that abundantly clear this conference season: The team beat UNC Asheville and USC Upstate in overtime. They’ve won three games by two. They’ve lost twice — both single-digit losses to High Point and Big South No. 1 seed Longwood — and they’ve won by double-digits (including Thursday night) only five times.
A discernible positive? The Eagles are much better against a team they’ve already faced.
Consider this: Winthrop has played four Big South teams twice as of Thursday night: UNC Asheville, Presbyterian College, Gardner-Webb and USC Upstate.
▪ In their second matchup with UNCA, the Eagles won in regulation and didn’t need OT (like they did in Hill).
▪ In their second matchup with Gardner-Webb, after beating the Bulldogs by two in January, they won by 11 in February.
▪ And don’t forget Thursday night: In the Eagles’ first contest against USC Upstate, they needed some late-game heroics and an extra period. In late February, the game was close for about 10 minutes.
5. The Eagles’ shooting slump is behind them. Maybe?
There was a four-game run — between Winthrop’s wins against North Carolina A&T and Presbyterian College — where the Eagles looked to be in a bit of a shooting slump.
Across those four games, Winthrop shot 27.5% from the 3-point line. And that included two of its lowest 3-point shooting outputs of the season — only two 3s against Radford and three against Presbyterian.
But it appears the Eagles have since emerged from that skid: In their last three games, they’ve hit 12, 12 and 16 3s.
It’s worth noting that even during that cold streak, the Eagles still won. Prosser called it “encouraging” at the time — particularly because it fostered the emergence of big men Talford and Hightower and let conference preseason player of the year DJ Burns shine.
“I feel like tonight, we were having fun,” said Russell Jones Jr., who finished Thursday night with nine points. “As the year has gone on, we’ve been getting better at finding where the open shots are gonna be, just getting adjusted. Everyone knew Year 1 was going to be an adjustment for coach Prosser and players, and I think now, we’re hitting that right form — three straight games where we’ve won in double digits, against some pretty good teams in the conference.
“So just seeing them go in, and just being able to win by that many points, it was fun out there.”
Now, the job is making the fun last.
This story was originally published February 24, 2022 at 10:01 PM.
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