The Winthrop men’s basketball team received 16 of 26 votes from the Big South Preseason Poll’s voting panel, projecting the Eagles to win the conference for a third-straight season.
“When you come to things like this, there’s a good chance that we’ll be picked somewhere near the top, and we understand the pressure that comes with that, and we welcome it,” said Winthrop head coach Mark Prosser.
Winthrop’s D.J. Burns Jr., a redshirt junior and native of Rock Hill, was named Big South Preseason Player of the Year. Prosser praised Burns for being a great teammate.
“He wants to make the right play more than making ‘the’ play. I think that he genuinely celebrates the success of his teammates as much as his own,” Prosser said. “Just a good player that we’re fortunate to have in our program.”
Last season, Burns started 24 of Winthrop’s 25 games, shooting 58.2% from the field while averaging 10.1 points and 3.4 rebounds in just 15.7 minutes per game.
Burns made the Big South’s “honorable mention” team at the conclusion of the 2020-2021 season after being a first-team selection in the preseason, in large part due to the success of his teammate Chandler Vaudrin (who has since left Winthrop and gone on to play in the NBA Summer League).
“I think it’d be hard to say it’s up to one person to fill that role,” Prosser said. “He (Vaudrin) impacted the game so much, whether it was scoring himself, creating for others with assists, and with his size, he was able to rebound at a high level.”
Along with Vaudrin, Winthrop loses Kyle Zunic (playing professionally in the Perth Wildcats organization), Charles Falden (transfer to James Madison University) and Adonis Arms (transfer to Texas Tech University).
“We lose over half our scoring, we lose over half of our rebounding, we lose about three–quarters of our assists per game, and so I think it’s going to take a group of us to make sure that we’re picking up that slack,” Prosser said.
“I think there’s a number of guys who have sort of been waiting in our program for that role to sort of be theirs to go grasp, and I look forward to seeing how they rise to the challenge when that opportunity presents itself. And it will.”
Entering his first season as the Eagles’ head coach, Prosser is no stranger to Winthrop. He was hired as an assistant at Winthrop in 2012 and served as associate head coach from 2013-2018.
“You work for some place for six years, you go away for three — it’s different than [if] you work some place for a year and you were gone for ten,” Prosser said. “There’s a lot of continuity with terminology and things like that that we got from coach Kelsey, so that adjustment hasn’t been [huge] compared to going in entirely brand new.”
When he was hired in April, Prosser brought his entire staff from Western Carolina with him. Winthrop has since scored two transfers from Prosser’s former school in Cory Hightower and Sin’Cere McMahon, leaving transfers Patrick Good, Drew Buggs and Cameron Whiteside as the only players on the roster with no prior experience to the terminology Prosser’s staff uses.
“You find yourself — and through no fault of anybody — as we implement things, as we give set calls, as we give calls for different things that happen throughout the course of the game, I’m like, ‘Alright, make sure Cameron, make sure Drew and make sure Pat you guys are paying attention,’ because they’re the three guys that either hadn’t been with us previously or hadn’t been here previously,” Prosser said.
“They’re very savvy college basketball players already, so it’s not brand new, it’s just maybe talked about or taught in a different way, so that challenge and that understanding maybe is a little bit more of a short-term thing than it may be with a freshman.”
With the addition of North Carolina A&T this season, the Big South Conference is now a 12-team league and will operate under a two-division format. Winthrop received 23 of 26 first-place votes in the South Division, with UNC Asheville receiving the remaining three votes.
In the Big South’s North Division, Campbell University was picked to finish on top, receiving 20 of 26 first-place votes. Campbell also had two players receive preseason honors — Cedric Henderson Jr. (first-team) and Jordan Whitfield (second-team).
“They’re just both really dedicated to being good at basketball and pouring into Campbell Basketball,” said Campbell head coach Kevin McGeehan.
“I’m really happy for them,” McGeehan said. “[But] the awards that really matter are the ones at the end of the season, and that only happens — we talk about it all the time — that only happens if you do well. If you win.”
Last season, Campbell shattered expectations, making it all the way to the Big South Championship game before losing to Winthrop. McGeehan acknowledged that last season’s Winthrop team was special.
“Winthrop could have competed in our league last year with their second group. That’s how talented they were top to bottom. One through whatever number it is that they played — 100 it felt like,” he said.
While McGeehan said it remains to be seen what Winthrop will bring to the table this season, there’s one person he knows Campbell will need to defend against better.
“We’ve gotta figure that out,” McGeehan said, pointing to a picture of D.J. Burns Jr.
As for what Winthrop fans can expect from Winthrop’s deep roster this season, Prosser said things will look a little different than in recent years.
“I think we’ll be as deep as they allow us to be,” Prosser said. “Will we have the substitution patterns that they had in the last year or two? No, I’m not nearly smart enough to know all of the who’s in the game and who’s not, and a lot of people smarter than me were able to do that.
Winthrop begins its season at home on Nov. 9 against Division III opponent Mary Baldwin.
