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LYNCHBURG, VA—Winthrop's seven-game winning streak was snapped by the hot-shooting Liberty Flames who connected on nine three-pointers and continued their domination of the Eagles with a 80-69 Big South Conference victory on Saturday night in the Vines Center.

With the loss Winthrop drops to 20-7 overall and falls to 14-4 and into a tie for first place in the conference with High Point, who the Eagles will host next Thursday night. Liberty improves to 17-10 and is 13-5 in the league.

With the win, Liberty sweeps the regular season and improves its home record against Winthrop to 22-0. The Flames have now won 37 of the last 39 meetings with the Eagles and lead the all-time series 46-8. The 80 points scored by Liberty was a new season high for a Winthrop opponent.

Freshman Erica Williams and junior Samiya Wright led Winthrop in scoring with 22 and 21 points, respectively, while Dequesha McClanahan scored 16 and dished out six assists. McClanahan now needs 10 points to surpass former Liberty standout Elena Kisseleva as the Big South's all-time leading scorer. She now has 2,145 career points.

Winthrop jumped out to a quick 12-1 lead in the open three minutes, 21 seconds as Wright connected on back-to-back 3-pointers and the Eagles got field goals from Williams, McClanahan and Schaquilla Nunn. The lead was 16-5 at the 12 minute mark after Williams scored again on a short jumper and Nunn converted two free throws, but from that point Liberty began its outside shooting assault. Over the last 12 minutes of the half, Liberty outscored the Eagles 33-12.

Over the final 11 minutes of the first period, Liberty connected on eight three balls and opened up a 10-point halftime lead by drilling four straight 3-pointers to close out the half with a 38-28 lead. Both Emily Frazier and Jayme Fisher-Davis connected on three long distance shots while Mickayla Sanders made the other two threes in the first half.

The 10-point lead was too much for Winthrop to overcome in the second half. The closest the Eagles could get was seven points at 52-45 with 9:12 left in the game after Williams made a layup and converted the three-point play.

Liberty connected on just one three-pointer by Fisher-Davis in the second as the Flames turned to its inside game with 6-4 Ashley Rininger and 6-5 Katelyn Adams. Rininger, who did not score in the first half, finished the night with 13 points to go along with a game-high 11 rebounds. Adams scored 10 of her team-high 17 points in the second half.

Winthrop entered the game ranked fifth in the nation in field goal percentage defense allowing the opponents to shoot just 34.1 percent and Liberty was ranked 10^th to set up what would appear to be an offensive struggle by both teams, but the Flames shot that theory down as they connected on 51 percent from the floor (26 of 51) and were 9 of 16(56 percent) from behind the arc. Winthrop, on the other hand, connected on the same number of field goals but shot 42 percent (26-62) and was just 4 of 18 on three-pointers (22 percent). After shooting just 31 percent in the first half (10-31), Winthrop warmed up to make 16 of 31 in the final period.

"They (Liberty) hit some amazing shots. All you can do is congratulate those shooters. They haven't had a half shooting the basketball like that all season, but they picked a good night to do it," said Winthrop head coach Kevin Cook.

"If you had told me at the beginning of the season, you've got two games to be Big South champions, I would take it. Both of the teams (High Point and Campbell) coming in next week are tough teams, but I'm confident that we have the team that can do it, and our players have to remain confident," said Cook.