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ROCK HILL, SC— The Winthrop men's basketball team hosts High Point University Saturday afternoon at 2 p.m. in both school's Big South Conference opener.

After a 2-4 start to the season, Winthrop finished the remaining schedule before conference play with a 4-2 mark that included wins at Ohio and Auburn and are 6-6 heading into Big South Conference action.

Winthrop hoped for seven wins heading into today's game, but fell 64-57 at home on Wednesday, Jan. 2 to a hot-shooting North Carolina Central team.      

Through the first 12 games of the season the Eagles have shown some strong defensive efforts and allowed 60.2 points per game and held opponents to just 29 percent shooting behind the arc. The Eagles ranked 25th in three-point field goal percentage defense heading into the week and 58th in scoring defense.

However, today begins a new season where all the stats and records leading up to this moment basically get wiped clean.

Winthrop opens up league play at home for the first time since the 2009-10 season when it lost 61-59 in overtime to preseason favorite Radford in early December of 2009.

The Eagles are looking to open Big South play with a win for the third straight season, which has never been accomplished. Historically the Eagles have not had that much success in Big South openers, sporting an all-time record of 11-16 and just 5-7 at home.

A year ago the Eagles finished league play with an 8-10 mark and they will look to better that with a core of players with minimal experience in conference games.

Junior Joab Jerome and redshirt senior Gideon Gamble have the most experience in Big South games while sophomores James Bourne, Derrick Henry, Andre Smith and Larry Brown have a combined 60 games played with 25 starts among them. Henry and Jerome both have the most starts among returning players with eight in league games last year.

Henry has consistent offense for the Eagles this season at 14.1 points per game. he's scored in double-figures in 10-of-12 games and is coming off a 16-point performance against NCCU.

Gamble is second on the team in scoring at 9.7 points per game and shooting 44 percent from the field, but just 28 percent behind the arc (14-for-51).

Jerome's offensive production has increased over the last few weeks and he's now averaging 8.4 points on 51 percent shooting while pulling down nearly five rebounds per game (4.9).

Brown is coming off a career-high 15 points against NCCU and is averaging 5.8 points and 5.8 rebounds on the year.

Winthrop faces a High Point team that hasn't played since Dec. 29 when it defeated Austin Peay 76-74 in the Dr. Pepper Classic Chattanooga, TN.

The Panthers went 5-7 through their pre-conference schedule that included a strong road schedule with games at Appalachian State, Indiana State, Western Michigan, Wake Forest and UT-Chattanooga.

High Point, which has lost four of its last five games, is led by redshirt freshman John Brown, who has led the team in scoring in nine of the 12 games and is averaging 19.1 points per game (2nd in the Big South). Brown shoots 51 percent from the floor and is also averaging 7.3 rebounds and 1.92 blocks. He's scored 20 or more points in five straight games.

Allan Chaney (graduate school senior) is second on the team with 13.5 points per game and is shooting 53 percent from the field and 88 percent from the line (36-for-41) while averaging 7.8 rebounds. He's led the team in scoring twice.

The Panthers offense ranks 4th in the Big South at 72.2 points per game and has only scored under 60 points once this season. High Point doesn't rely too much on threes as it ranks second to last in three-point field goals per game (4.08) and three-point attempts (.187).

This will be just the second time ever that Winthrop opens up Big South play against High Point. Winthrop lost to the Panthers, 62-61 on Jan. 12, 2008.

The Eagles have dominated the series 24-8 all-time, but have lost three straight to High Point and six of the last eight meetings.

Winthrop is 12-2 all-time against High Point at the Winthrop Coliseum.