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ROCK HILL, SC—The Winthrop men's basketball team begins a three-game home stand this Sunday, Dec. 30 at 2 p.m. when it takes on Hampton at the Winthrop Coliseum.

Winthrop (5-5) is coming off arguably one of the best non-conference road swings in school history after with wins at Ohio and Auburn and going toe-to-toe with seventh-ranked Ohio State prior to Christmas.

Now that the holiday is over, it's time for the Eagles to look to gain momentum off their recent success. Winthrop has now won three of its last four games and will play its next three games at home beginning with Hampton on Sunday.

The game against the Pirates will be the beginning of three games in a seven-day span.

This is just the third meeting all-time between the Eagles and the Pirates as each team has a win. Winthrop's win came at the Winthrop Coliseum in 2003 in the Costner-Brothers-Winthrop Shootout in an 84-74 victory. Hampton defeated the Eagles 45-44 in the 2010 NIT Season Tip-Off in Winston-Salem, NC at Wake Forest University.

The Eagles are coming off a hard-fought 74-67 victory at Auburn on Dec. 22 in which they held off a late rally by the home team to earn their first ever win over the Tigers in five tries. It was a balanced scoring attack that helped the Eagles jump out to a 16-point second half lead.

Junior Joab Jerome continues to improve each game as he led the team with a career-high 16 points on 5-for-6 shooting from the field and 6-for-7 at the foul line. Over the last five games Jerome is shooting 66 percent from the floor while averaging 10.4 points, 5.4 rebounds and 1.0 steals.

Sophomore Derrick Henry leads the team in scoring at 14.7 points per game, but did not start for the first time all season at Auburn as he was nursing a knee injury. He did manage to play 25 minutes off the bench and scored 10 points on 3-for-7 shooting. It was the fewest amount of shots he attempted in a game all season, but the ninth game out of 10 in which he managed double-figures.

Picking up the scoring slack against Auburn was junior Christian Farmer who made a huge splash in the second half with 13 points in a four-minute span that helped Winthrop to the 16-point advantage. He finished with a career-high 15 points and knocked down a career-best four threes.

Gideon Gamble (R-Sr.) bounced back from a couple of poor shooting games at Ohio and Ohio State to go 5-for-11 at Auburn and scored 13 points as he also dished out a career-best five assists. He is currently second on the team in scoring on the season with 9.4 per game.

Sophomore Andre Smith is third on the team in scoring at 9.0 points per game and coming off a career-best performance of seven assists at Auburn.

Winthrop has been getting the job done on both ends of the court, but the defense has really been tough over the last four games. Winthrop held an Ohio team 25 points below its scoring average and also held #7 Ohio State to its lowest scoring total all season. Over the last four games Winthrop has allowed just 58.8 points per game while allowing opponents to shoot 37 percent from the floor and just 22 percent from behind the arc. Winthrop has moved to 89th in the country in scoring defense at 61.5 and is ranked 40th in three-point field goal percentage defense (.286).

Hampton enters the game at 2-8, but is 2-2 in the last four games and coming off a 54-52 loss to Northern Kentucky on Dec. 20 at home. This will be the first road game since Nov. 28 for the Pirates, who started the season with six straight away from home.

The Pirates two victories have come over Howard and American. Don't let the 2-8 record fool you as seven of Hampton's 10 games on the year have been decided by less than 10 points. The only lopsided game was an 18-point loss at William & Mary in the season-opener. Hampton lost by 10 points at Richmond and 12 points to Robert Morris.

Freshman Deron Powers leads Hampton in scoring at 12.6 points per game and is the only player averaging double-figures. He had an off-night shooting against Northern Kentucky (4-for-16) but went 7-for-8 from the line and finished with 15 points. He is shooting 38 percent from the floor and 87 percent at the foul line.

Junior David Bruce is second on the team in scoring at 9.1 points per game, but he hasn't played since the Robert Morris game.

Senior Jasper Williams and redshirt sophomore Emmanuel Okoroba have been picking up the scoring slack. Williams had a career-high 22 points in the win over American and Okoroba has 18 and 16 points in his last two games and has only started the last three games.

Hampton is a defensive team that is holding opponents to 39.8 percent from the field (ranked 88th nationally) and to just 63.7 points per game. In 10 games on the year, only two opponents have scored 70 or more points (Ohio/Radford).   

Winthrop and Hampton have two common opponents to this point of the season as Hampton lost a close games at Ohio on Nov. 20 (L, 75-67) and against Wofford on Nov. 23 (L, 56-51).