Longwood wallops Winthrop in Big South finals to dash Eagles’ NCAA dreams
There’s a new king in the Big South.
The Winthrop men’s basketball team, a group that has been on the Big South championship stage three times in as many years and has owned the league it’s resided in for the last two decades, was dethroned by a hungry and disciplined Longwood team 79-58 on Sunday afternoon in front of an ESPN2 audience.
With the win, Longwood earned its first Big South title in school history and punched its ticket to its first NCAA tournament. It also spoiled Winthrop’s chances for a third-straight NCAA tournament bid — the dominant win casting the Eagles aside as if they were scant debris on Longwood’s path to history.
Sunday marked the first time Winthrop has lost in the Big South tournament since 2019 and the first time it lost a Big South championship game since 2016.
Sunday was also the largest margin of defeat for Winthrop in a Big South championship game in school history. The largest loss before Sunday happened in 2014, a 15-point defeat to Coastal Carolina.
“At the end of the day, I’m so proud of our kids for the effort and the things that they’ve done together throughout the course of our season,” Winthrop first-year head coach Mark Prosser told reporters postgame, seated next to inconsolable redshirt juniors Cory Hightower and DJ Burns. “It’s always different in coaching changes and things like that. But our kids never batted an eye. They’re just wonderful people and bought in with such great players.
“It’s my job to make sure they’re ready to go. And it’s 1,000% on me that we weren’t better today.”
The Eagles were never in the fight on Sunday. And the electric half-and-half crowd in Bojangles Coliseum in Charlotte knew it: The team from Rock Hill fell down by seven with 14:17 left in the first half. Then 11 with 11:07 left. Then by 17 and, a few minutes later, by 21.
The Lancers entered halftime up 45-27, winning the turnovers-off-points battle 22-2 and playing disciplined and unfazed: Isaiah Wilkins notched seven rebounds to go along with a team-leading 12 points in the half. Justin Hill did what Justin Hill does, wreaking havoc on pick-and-rolls. Nate Lliteras went 3-of-4 from deep.
And the rest of the team followed suit offensively and locked up everything else on defense — including Big South Player of the Year DJ Burns, who for the game finished with just 14 points in 28 minutes.
Longwood, in other words, deserved to be on Sunday’s championship stage. And the team knew it.
The last realistic chance Winthrop had at mounting a comeback came in the opening minutes of the second half. The team looked rejuvenated and went on a 7-4 run, forcing Longwood head coach Griff Aldrich to burn a team-settling timeout.
But that was that: Longwood emerged from that timeout with a Leslie Nkereuwem dunk that sparked a 13-0 run and put the game away for good. (The Eagles made other attempts to cut the lead, but they could never get the game closer than 15 in the second half.)
In the end, the Eagles shot 41.2% from the field and 25% from the free-throw line. They were led in scoring by Burns and also senior Mike Anumba, who finished with 12. Graduate transfers Patrick Good (11 points and five steals) and Drew Buggs (eight points and two assists) also had good final games as Eagles.
Longwood, conversely, finished shooting 52.8% from the field and saw every player who played score. They were led by Wilkins, who finished with 19 points and eight rebounds.
With 14:44 left in the second half, the Longwood faithful knew its team had such a grip on its postseason destiny that it started chanting “Ov-er-rated!” to the Eagles.
And while that might not be quite right — the Eagles did, after all, enter Sunday winning its last 11 — it might stand in as a replacement for a more consequential truth: Longwood, before the season and even through the first few days of March, might not have been rated highly enough.
Winthrop’s unique run in 2021-22
Winthrop’s run to the 2021-22 Big South tournament championship game was a perfect cocktail of what makes college basketball great. There was enough triumph and dejection and drama to make it exhausting.
But there was also just enough luck to make it worthwhile.
The Eagles were preseason favorites to win the conference this year for good reason: They rostered preseason player of the year DJ Burns. They’d earned the conference’s NCAA bid the past two years, too — doing so in a particularly dominant fashion in 2020-21, when the team only lost once in the regular season en route to breaking program and league records.
But Winthrop’s preseason was riddled with unknowns nonetheless.
The team had a new coach in Mark Prosser. It returned a core group of players — Burns, Russell Jones, Chase Claxton, Mike Anumba, Kelton Talford — but it also lost several key contributors to the transfer portal (and even one to the NBA draft). The Eagles added a lot of talent themselves from the portal, but an anxiety remained: This team was nearly unrecognizable from the one before it. Would that change anything?
The Eagles didn’t earn an unimpeachable vote of confidence through their non-conference slate. They won only four of 10 matchups to begin the year against Division I opponents. One of those wins came against Washington, the first time Winthrop has beaten a Pac-12 team, and the others came against tough mid-major opponents Hartford, Furman and Mercer. But all the wins were close — one requiring the team to come back from nine points down in 51 seconds — and all the losses were lopsided.
Winthrop’s proclivity for close games continued in conference play. The Eagles beat Campbell by two, beat UNC Asheville in overtime, sweated-out a five-point win against league-worst Charleston Southern, beat Presbyterian by two and beat Gardner-Webb by two in their first five conference games. They started 5-0, but that record wasn’t insightful to the earnest fan.
The close wins continued through January and were peppered by a few losses to High Point and regular-season champion Longwood. In early February, Winthrop was considered by KenPom analytics to be among the top-10 “luckiest” teams in the country. This plus notable roster attrition made a deep Big South tournament run feel unlikely.
But the Eagles prevailed still, like they had all year. They beat High Point by 17 and then Gardner-Webb by nine in the Big South tournament, giving them a chance to earn their third NCAA tournament bid in as many years.
Those hopes, of course, were dashed on Sunday.
“Every win is hard,” Prosser said, adding, “Because of that name on their jerseys on the front and certainly because of who they are as players with their name on the back, oftentimes we get teams’ best shots. That’s part of being in this program. That’s part of the challenge you accept by coming to Winthrop. I think we relish that. I think we enjoy that challenge.
“But at the end of the day, when you have a goal set, and when you don’t attain that goal, it’s difficult. ... We don’t take too kindly to losing around here. And we won’t get used to it.”
When is the NCAA Selection Sunday show?
Longwood will learn its NCAA tournament opponent when the 2022 bracket is revealed at 6 p.m. on Sunday, March 13 on CBS.
This story was originally published March 6, 2022 at 2:01 PM with the headline "Longwood wallops Winthrop in Big South finals to dash Eagles’ NCAA dreams."
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