Five things to know as Winthrop Eagles prepare to open basketball season
Winthrop basketball is back for the 2025-26 campaign and both the men’s and women’s teams are looking to improve on what they accomplished last season. Here are 5 things to know heading into the season:
Winthrop men feel disrespected
Coach Mark Prosser said the Eagles being predicted to finish fifth in the Big South will be a bit of a motivator for his team heading into the season. High Point, once again, is the conference favorite.
“I don’t think we’ve had a team to finish fifth in any way, shape or form in our program in over a decade,” Prosser said, “but for whatever reason, they feel like this is the staff and the team to do it. We have a lot of new people and there’s a lot of new coaches in this league. You know, maybe that’s how they envision us in our program. And, that’s telling, obviously. And so that’s something you certainly don’t dwell on, but certainly you store away.”
Prosser said the message he and his staff have given to the team is that the preseason ranking gives the Eagles a chance to prove the naysayers wrong.
“You can be mad about it now, but nothing really matters until you have a chance to prove people wrong,” Prosser said. You can’t really do anything about it until the new year, right? We’ve got a lot of fish to fry before that. So, yeah, I would say that I was somewhat surprised, but again, if that’s a direct correlation with what the league and then the coaches around the league feel about us, then it’s up to us to prove them wrong.”
New players for Winthrop Eagles
It is becoming more common in modern college basketball for a lot of roster turnover with name, image and likeness (NIL) driving a lot of decisions for players to transfer to make more money at other schools.
Winthrop is no different. Being a mid-major program, a lot of players transfer out each year, leaving Prosser and his staff responsible for filling a competitive roster each season. Star freshman Paul Jones II transferred to James Madison and losing players like Kelton Talford and Ryan Jolly to graduation also hurt.
Prosser was looking for winners to come into the program in the offseason and feels his staff has secured a solid group of players.
“We have a whole bunch of guys that have a chip on their shoulder and something to prove and are anxious to play in a system like ours,” Prosser said. “It’s different now, because they have opportunities that maybe they wouldn’t have had if this was a year ago. To watch that materialize, to see who’s stepping into those roles, I think, is has been a lot of fun because, you know, again, it’s a little bit different when you come into a program say, ‘Well, they don’t return, four or five starters,’ there’s a lot of opportunities to go out there and earn playing time and earn starting roles. They’ve competed the right way to earn those opportunities.”
The Eagles added eight Division I transfers in the offseason:
Daylen Berry, guard, Charleston Southern: Berry was selected to the Big South all-conference second team. He started in all 32 games last season at Charleston Southern. Averaged 13.8 points, 2.8 assists and 5.3 rebounds.
Pharrell Boyogueno, guard, Gardner-Webb: He started in 26 of 28 appearances for the Runnin’ Bulldogs and averaged 7.9 points, 4.3 rebounds and 0.8 assists per game at Gardner-Webb last season.
Kody Clouet, guard, San Diego: He averaged 8.9 points, 2.7 rebounds and 1.1 assists per game in 29 appearances for San Diego last season.
Seifeldin Hendawy, guard, Loyola Chicago: He appeared in 16 games for the Ramblers and scored his first collegiate points against Eureka in Nov. 2024.
Josh Meo, guard, Coastal Carolina: Meo started in 31 of 32 appearances, averaged 8.5 points, 2.2 assists and 2.9 rebounds per game last season.
Ed Nnamoko, forward, New Mexico State: He appeared in 17 games for the Aggies and recorded a season-high seven points against Texas A&M Corpus Christi in Nov. 2024.
Kareem Rozier, guard, Duquesne: Rozier averaged 6.7 points, 3.3 assists and 1.9 rebounds per game last season in his junior year.
Braylhan Thomas, guard, Georgia Southern: He averaged 3.1 points, 2.5 rebounds and 0.7 assists per game as a freshman with the Eagles.
Lone freshman on men’s team
As college basketball evolves, more teams are shifting to stacking rosters with experienced players through the transfer portal. The Eagles are no exception. Winthrop did, however, add a true freshman to the mix.
Guard Kaleb Evans is a native of Lexington, South Carolina. He won a high school state championship in South Carolina before leaving for Moravian Prep in North Carolina. Evans also played travel basketball in the Overtime Elite league for the YNG Dreamerz.
“Caleb came to our league camp years ago as a young kid,” Prosser said. “He had a very highly decorated career in South Carolina before going over to do the OTE and Moravian deal.”
Prosser recognized it isn’t common to recruit freshmen anymore, but Evans was different.
“He’s learning very, very quickly,” Prosser said of Evans. “And, he’s a really good kid, and he has been productive. He has those understandings of, we’re all going to have freshman moments at times, but he’ll be ready to go if called upon.”
Eagles’ schedules feature high-profile games
The schedule for the Winthrop men includes several challenging non-conference games to help prepare the Eagles for league play. Winthrop travels to Arkansas — coached by Naismith Memorial Hall-of-Fame coach John Calipari — in November. The Eagles also head to Lincoln, Nebraska, to face the Cornhuskers. In late December. Their final non-conference game is against Texas Tech, which lost in last year’s NCAA tournament to eventual champion Florida.
“I think that we always have and we always will (schedule tough non-conference opponents), because we stand on the shoulders of a lot of really good coaches and players that came before us. We have a national brand in college basketball. People know Winthrop basketball, if you’re a fan of college basketball throughout the country. And so knowing that, and to be that national brand, I think you have to keep competing with some of the best programs in the country.”
The women’s team includes non-conference games against Marquette, South Carolina, Tennessee, Charlotte and Virginia. Coach Semeka Randall Lay feels challenging her team in the non-conference is the best way to gauge where the players are at before conference play starts. She is also looking to see how her team competes against some of the schools closest to home.
“I know everybody always highlights those (high-profile) games, and those are cool (experiences) for our student-athletes to be able to play in,” Lay said. “The games that I’m more interested in seeing us compete are the teams like our rivalry with Queens and possibly Charlotte and UNC Wilmington. Those games will give us some better measurements as we get ready for conference play.”
Goals for Eagles’ women’s team
The Winthrop women’s basketball team finished the 2024-25 season 16-15 with a 9-7 conference record.
Lay said that no specific win total can quantify success, but building upon last season and most importantly, not regressing any will be on the forefront of what she and her staff are ingraining this season.
“If you ask any of these athletes, they want to come in and be able to win,” Lay said. “I think this is going to be a time for growth for us, because it is a new team. We’re going to try to do our best to try to continue to keep improving like we did a year ago. I mean, that’s the goal, to try to match that or surpass that. So, the biggest thing is just mentally getting ready for what conference play is about. And I like that. There’s some respect in our league with us being picked fourth. And so we have to find a way to win some basketball games especially when we get into conference play.”
This is the second straight season Winthrop’s women were picked to finish fourth in the Big South. Junior guard Amourie Porter was picked to the All-Big South’s first team. As a sophomore, Porter averaged 13.3 points, 6.5 rebounds and 1.7 assists per game.