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Winthrop's Kasen Harrison scored two of his 15 points on a late bucket to win the game for Winthrop Wednesday. (Photo: Winthrop Athletics)
ROCK HILL, S.C. -- The first 20 minutes Wednesday were among the 20 best minutes Longwood basketball has played all year. The Lancers led, 45-28, at the interval, hitting 51-plus percent of their field goal attempts and limiting Winthrop to just 30.4 percent in the period. Longwood scored 1.406 points per possession.
Winthrop then took the second half to ask that Longwood hold its proverbial beverage.
The Eagles ran their winning streak to three games Wednesday, bouncing back from 19 points down early in the second half and getting a high-arcing Kasen Harrison runner off the backboard with 1.3 seconds remaining to stun Longwood, 76-74, at Winthrop Coliseum.
"Obviously in the first half, they dictated the play. It wasn't even close," Prosser said. "They were scoring out of their actions. We were just being picked apart methodically. They had a great game plan. They're obviously very well-coached. They have really good players.
"We had to have a challenge of our program and our team to make sure we were more difficult to play against," Prosser added.
Harrison's shot wasn't the only story, but it was a big part of what took place. After Walyn Napper hit two free throws to tie the game at 71 with 1:53 left, Toneari Lane hit a triple with 40 seconds remaining to give Winthrop a lead. D.A. Houston countered 13 seconds later to again level the game. Then Harrison took a pass on his side's final possession, carefully backed down his man, then drove to the right side of the basket and bounced home the winner.
"He has that knack for -- the moment's not too big for him," Prosser said of Harrison. "There were a couple of things that we'd seen throughout the game. They play so hard. It came down to a kid making a play."
Prosser cited Lane's three as one of the key plays that set up Harrison to make the shot. For his part, Harrison acknowledged both his accomplishments and those of his teammates.
"Coach Prosser drew up a play for me to get downhill and pass it," Harrison said. "I wanted to look to T-Lane. He'd just hit the last couple shots. They stayed home on the shooter, so I ended up having a wide-open layup."
And what about that Lane triple and the one Cory Hightower hit to square the game with 2:52 to play?
"They were very big moments," Harrison said. "If they don't hit those shots, we don't win that game."
Whatever Prosser said in the locker room at the half clearly worked -- albeit gradually so. The Eagles remained in a double-digit hole until just before the 16-minute mark, when a Lane trey sliced the Lancer advantage to eight at 49-41. The visitors again worked it back to 11 after two DeShaun Wade free throws.
As easy as it would have been to do -- especially given the Lancers' last two results against the Eagles on their home floor in Willett Hall and in last year's Big South championship game in Charlotte -- the Eagles refused to blink.
Winthrop tore off a 9-0 burst over the next two minutes, with back-to-back threes from Sin'Cere McMahon and Hightower knifing a once-comfortable margin to a precarious two points. Isaiah Wilkins immediately hit a bucket to put Longwood back ahead by four, but the game would never again feature a margin greater than a single possession.
This seems to be a good time to ask what exactly Prosser said in the locker room.
"We went in the locker room and said we had to protect our home court. We couldn't go out like that," Harrison said. "Sin'Cere McMahon did a good job of leading us and telling us it wasn't over, and that we needed to pick our heads up and play. That helped us a lot."
"We were a better version of ourselves (in the second half). That's how we want to play," Prosser said. "It came down to getting stops and being difficult to play against on the defensive end."
The Winthrop defense put the clamps on Longwood in the second stanza, limiting the Lancers to 10-for-25 (40 percent) from the floor while hitting 69.6 percent (16-for-23) of their own tries. Longwood scored just .853 points per possession in the second 20. The visiting side also made it to the free throw line just eight times in the period, hitting four.
"The adjustment was just playing harder and keeping them off the glass. They're a very good offensive rebounding team," Harrison said. "We needed to go for the loose balls and play harder than they did. They played very hard, but we had to play even harder, because that determined who won the game."
Winthrop outrebounded Longwood, 18-8, in the second half. The Lancers could muster just three offensive boards in the period.
Longwood coach Griff Aldrich seemed to agree with much of Harrison's sentiment.
"Winthrop shot the ball well in the second half, credit to them," Aldrich told media after the game. "But we didn't make it uncomfortable on the defensive end. It was very fluid. We didn't compete the way we needed to compete."
Aldrich remarked about his team's inconsistent halves from Wednesday's outing, saying, "Probably one of the best halves of basketball, and then we took our foot off the gas. Credit to Winthrop for coming out and competing, but the same thing happened to us at Radford. You don't come out with the same level of intensity and urgency to compete, and you give up some shots, you give them some life and then you've got a game."
McMahon paced the Eagle effort with 20 points, hitting 6-of-12 shots (4-of-6 from three) in 24 minutes of game action. Three additional Eagles joined McMahon in doubles, led by Lane's 17 on 5-of-9 shooting (4-of-7 from three). Kelton Talford scored 16 and snatched eight caroms, while Harrison scored 15 on 5-for-9 from the floor. Winthrop shot 23-for-46 (50 percent) on the night, buoyed by the spectacular second-half effort and an 18-of-20 result from the free throw line.
Longwood also placed five in double digits, guided by Houston's 14 and four triples. Leslie Nkereuwem and Napper tallied 13 apiece off the bench. Michael Christmas added 11 -- also in reserve duty -- and Wilkins poured in 10. The Lancers finished the night 27-of-58 (46.6 percent) from the deck, seeing 11 of their 23 threes (47.8 percent) find the net. Longwood finished the night just 9-of-15 (60 percent) from the charity stripe.
Both sides return to Big South play in Virginia on Saturday afternoon. Longwood (15-9, 7-4 Big South) hosts Campbell in Willett Hall in Farmville, while Winthrop (11-13, 6-5) travels to the Dedmon Center in Radford to do battle with the Highlanders. Both games are set for a 2:00 (Eastern) tip, with streaming available over ESPN+.
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