Consistency has Winthrop men on the cusp of Big South title

After beating High Point by 20 in January, Winthrop basketball coach Pat Kelsey put forth a rhetorical question in the postgame press conference:

“The question is, can we sustain that?” he asked about his talented but enigmatic team. “Can that be our consistent performance moving forward in conference play?”

The Eagles’ 86-66 win over the Panthers in Rock Hill on Jan. 14 was the second of 11 wins in the last 12 games, a stretch that pushed Kelsey’s team into first place in the Big South Conference with two games remaining.

The answer to Kelsey’s rhetorical question in the 40-plus days since that win has been a firm yes.

“The results reflect that and the outside world can see the success that we’re having in games,” he said Wednesday. “But the turning point in our season was when we started having elite championship practices consistently.”

Ah, there’s that word (or a variation of it).

Consistency has leeched throughout the program, starting with practices. Winthrop practices in the last month have been competitive without getting chippy. Players are energetic and attentive and talk to each other about what just happened and correct or encourage each other, something I see or hear on a daily basis from my courtside practice perch.

That’s players taking ownership of their team, a team dynamic that slides a grin across Kelsey’s mug when he ponders the development.

“We’re all locked in and we’re all trying to get better because we know every game’s gonna be tough and we need everyone,” said freshman guard Bjorn Broman. “We’re all helping each other and we’re all starting to click and just come together.”

Constructive vibes have made practices shorter - Kelsey likes to skip to the next thing on the agenda when drills are done right - and more useful.

“A lot of the older guys have taken, especially me, Adam (Pickett), some of the other newer guys, just taken them under their wing,” said Broman, “teaching us some stuff that they’ve learned since they’ve been here for a few years.”

The communication between different players - not just certain guys talking to certain others - evinces a team that’s congealed from a bunch of disparate parts - freshmen, transfers, players coming off redshirts - into a singular unit. Kelsey said in the preseason he knew he had a skilled team; their susccess would depend on how solidly they came together.

In the last month’s practies there is none of the mumbled back-talk to coaches or moaning about the calls of practice referees - assistant coaches - that cropped up in the first two months of the season. That died with the three-game losing streak in early January that sparked the turnaround.

The Eagles have been incredibly consistent offensively. Winthrop’s lowest points per possession tally since the High Point game was the 1.02 effort in a win over Gardner-Webb. In eight of the 12 games, Winthrop scored over 1.10 points per possession, the kind of stats produced by an offense that’s really cooking.

In the last 12 games, Kelsey’s offense has attempted at least 20 free throws eight times, and made 50 percent or more of its 2-point field goal attempts nine.

Perhaps the biggest improvement in consistency has been defensive. One of Winthrop’s last 14 opponents has made 40 percent or more of its 3-pointers, and eight of 11 have been held to 10 or less assists. That latter stat can be looked at several ways, but certainly indicates a compact defense that opponents are not easily pulling apart.

Winthrop’s statistically best defensive performance of the season came in the home win against Coastal Carolina last week, while games against Radford and Longwood were won with strings of defensive stops at crucial junctures.

Offense has come very easily to this team, but defense took some work. Broman credited the consecutive losses to Campbell, Coastal Carolina and UNC Asheville with jerking the team’s defensive attentiveness into proper alignment.

“Didn’t like losing, that’s for sure,” he said.

Consistent improvement has helped 6-foot-10 transfer Zach Price finally evolve into a difference maker, while helping 6-foot-8 matchup nightmare Xavier Cooks become a 46 percent 3-point shooter in conference play. Many words have been typed about what kind of extra color distance shooting adds to Cooks’ offensive palette - and Winthrop’s - when he’s calmly rainbowing in his pillow soft 3’s.

Maintaining a consistent keel has prevented Winthrop from getting overwhelmed by big games, demonstrated in last week’s wins over fellow title contenders Coastal Carolina and Asheville. The Eagles will draw on that reserve of steely self-belief again Thursday night at the Millis Center in John Brown’s last regular season home game as a High Point Panther, sure to be an exuberant and emotional environment.

Winthrop’s team meals on the road have even be consistent. Kelsey is a Chipotle burrito man, end of story.

And consistency is also apparent any time a reporter tries to get Winthrop players or coaches to look past the next game, especially when asking about potential Big South championships or NCAA tournament appearances.

They’re not doing it. Especially not now. It’d be... inconsistent with what’s gotten them this far.

This story was originally published February 24, 2016 at 7:19 PM with the headline "Consistency has Winthrop men on the cusp of Big South title."