Winthrop men's belief endures during rough stretch

It’s been mentioned in these pages before that Winthrop coach Pat Kelsey is an avid consumer of the college basketball web site KenPom.com. If Kelsey read Ken Pomeroy’s weekly blog post from Friday morning, his tension may have eased a bit.

While Winthrop coughed up a 23-point advantage on Wednesday night in Asheville resulting in a one-point loss that would have been unfathomable at halftime, it wasn’t even in the top-four biggest blown leads of the week.

Grambling had a 1.9 percent chance of beating Alabama State when it fell 17 points behind with 19 minutes to play, before coming back to knock off the Hornets in overtime. Iowa trailed by a similar margin late in the first half at Purdue before turning over the deficit in the second half to beat the 20th-ranked Boilermakers by seven.

UC Riverside and Southern Cal surrendered respective leads of 19 and 22 points to drop games that they had less than 1 percent chances of losing at various junctures.

Trailing Winthrop 64-42 with 15 minutes, 15 seconds left in the second half, Asheville had a 4.9 percent chance of winning according to KenPom.com, which tracks such things. Nic McDevitt’s team proceeded to outscore the Eagles 43-20 the rest of the way, eking out an 85-84 win that kept them perfect in the Big South at 4-0.

Leaving Kimmel Arena Wednesday night, Kelsey and Winthrop might have felt all alone in the cold mountain air.

“We’ve had a tough little stretch,” he said Friday.

After winning its first two league games in December, Winthrop (9-6, 2-3 Big South) has dropped three straight. Wednesday night’s stemmed in large part from a spate of turnovers the likes of which the Eagles haven’t seen this season. They coughed the ball up 22 times - six more than the team’s previous season-high of 16 in the opener against Hampton - leading to 29 Asheville points.

The Bulldogs ramped up their defensive pressure after falling behind - as one would expect - and the press paid off. In one 2-minute-plus stretch, the Eagles gave the ball away five times in six possessions.

“They sped us up,” said Kelsey. “They were in a desperate position being down that type of deficit and their only chance was to create chaos and havoc... and we lost our poise.”

The chaos Asheville cooked up effected Winthrop in other areas besides ball-handling. Kelsey counted five different times when the Eagles scored at the rim, only for the Bulldogs to run the other way and get a shot at the Winthrop rim - make or miss - within a matter of seconds. He also found over 50 different instances where individual players botched transition defensive responsibilities.

The breakdown of focus seemed to stem from the turnover issue, something that has rarely troubled Winthrop this season. That partly explains why Winthrop hasn’t worked much on press-break offense; teams weren’t pressing them because they had proven to be capable ball-handlers. Kelsey said his team will be better prepared next time it faces a similar situation.

“That’s on me,” he said. “Putting our guys in those positions more in practice would have prepared us for those opportunities better.”

After a pre-scheduled day off Thursday, the Eagles were back at it again Friday. Winthrop practiced at Northwestern High School in part because of Donald Trump’s visit to the Coliseum, and also because Kelsey said he likes how big the school’s main gym is. The rare day off gave everyone some time to physically rest and reset mentally.

“It happened,” said fifth-year senior Jimmy Gavin. “Now we look at the film, we look at why it happened, and then as long as we do a better job going forward, hopefully it is an anomaly.”

Kelsey was encouraged by the energy Friday.

There wasn’t any moping, even when the practice began with accountability sprints doled out based on missed assignments. Winthrop’s best players, including standout guard Keon Johnson, who turned the ball over five times in the last 15 minutes, were out front plowing through sprints, up the court and back in less than 11 seconds.

Kelsey said the locker room after the Asheville loss was as difficult as he’s encountered during his time at Winthrop.

“They were crushed,” he said.

It was that jaw-dropping disappointment, coupled with the somehow enduring belief that Winthrop basketball still can make 2015-16 special, that produced a bounce-back practice Friday.

“Clearly, we haven’t hit our stride yet,” Gavin said. “Everyone knows that, and we’re searching for it. It’s important while we’re trying to figure it out to stay together and keep chipping away.”

This story was originally published January 8, 2016 at 6:53 PM with the headline "Winthrop men's belief endures during rough stretch."