Talford points to ‘hot start’, powers Winthrop to home basketball win over Presbyterian
Kelton Talford scored 21 points and grabbed seven rebounds as the Winthrop Eagles beat the Presbyterian Blue Hose 82-72 at Winthrop Coliseum Wednesday night.
With the home crowd behind them, the Eagles blitzed their opponents in the first half, shooting 19 of 24 from the field and 9 of 12 from beyond the arc.
Winthrop led by 13 at the break.
“It’s just the energy when we play here, man,” the 6-foot-7 Talford said. “To the fans again, I can’t thank them enough. Just coming out and just all the energy, you can feel it when you come into the gymnasium.
“And just being able to get to that hot start, I think it has a lot to do with them. And the way we worked as a unit as well today, swinging the ball and passing up good shots for great ones. All praise to my teammates finding each other, and it was a good unit win.’
The Eagles extended their lead to as much as 24 in the second half, but Presbyterian went on a bit of a run near the end to bring the lead down to 10 by the final buzzer.
“As a coach, the things that linger with you are that last six-and-a-half minutes,” head coach Mark Prosser said. “We lost by 14 points in the last six-and-a-half minutes which, you know, isn’t what we want to do. But, at the end of the day, when we got up this morning, the goal was to win the basketball game, and we were able to do that. We’ll celebrate that and try to make the necessary adjustments moving forward.”
A big spark for the Eagles was guard Howard Fleming Jr. The 6-foot-5 junior from Louisville scored a season-high 16 points while making a career-high five three-pointers.
“We’ve been waiting for that from Howie,” Talford said. “He just came back from injury not too long ago. And if you don’t know Howie, Howie’s in the gym 24/7. So it was just a matter of time for Howie to break out.”
Looking ahead, Winthrop goes on the road Saturday to face Longwood in a rematch of last year’s Big South tournament championship game, which the Lancers won 79-58.
The Eagles haven’t beaten Longwood since 2021 and haven’t won an away game all season, but Prosser said none of that will matter when the ball tips off at 2 p.m.
“If our guys need any motivation for this one, then they haven’t been paying attention for the past (ten) months,” Prosser said. “So we have to make sure we channel it the right way.
“There’s a group of us that were in that locker room after that (championship) game and a couple guys that weren’t. You know, it’s just the next game on our schedule, which is really, really important. It will take a great effort from us to go up there and have a chance to win, but we’ll prepare the right way, we’ll hop on that long bus ride and we’ll go make a run at it.”