ROCK HILL, SC— Junior
Keon Johnson scored 22 of his career-high 36 points in a big second half that led Winthrop to a 97-72 victory over Charleston Southern, Wednesday evening at the Winthrop Coliseum.
The victory is the sixth straight for the Eagles, who improve to 15-6 on the year and 7-3 in the Big South. Charleston Southern falls to 8-13 overall and 4-6 in the league. Winthrop will look for its first seven-game win streak since 2009-10 on Saturday when it hosts Radford at 4 p.m. on ESPN3.
Johnson finished the game 11-for-16 from the floor and 10-for-13 behind the arc as he was 6-for-7 from three in the second half alone. His hot shooting sparked a second half that saw the Eagles shoot 65 percent from the floor and 75 percent from three on the way to 57 points. Winthrop finished the game shooting 50 percent from the floor and 61 percent from three.
Winthrop turned a six-point lead with 17:52 to play into a 36-point lead with just over seven minutes remaining as Johnson and the Eagles went off. It started with an alley-oop from
Jimmy Gavin to
Duby Okeke that was followed by a Gavin triple to regain the double-figure lead. Winthrop continued to increase its lead as
Bjorn Broman and
Xavier Cooks decided to get in on the action behind the arc as Broman's basket it put the Eagles up 22 and Cooks made it a 27-point lead midway through the half.
Leading 73-47 after a turnover that led to an easy basket for the Bucs by Demetrius Pollard, Cooks answered with a three as the Eagles connected on three-pointers on four straight possessions. Cooks started things off with a three and then came up with a steal that led to a Johnson three. Johnson then hit two more as the lead extended to 36 points.
Cooks finished the game with 13 points, nine rebounds, three assists, three steals and two blocks. Gavin also had 13 points and four assists while Okeke chipped in with 10 points, five rebounds and five blocks. Okeke now has 53 blocks on the season, which moves him into second in the single-season Top 10 and 13 back of Josh Grant's record of 66. The Eagles finished the game 17-for-28 behind the arc as the 17 made threes ties the school record, which was accomplished most recently on Nov. 10, 2006 vs. North Greenville.
Aaron Wheeler led the Bucs with 22 points as he recorded a double-double by adding a game-high 12 rebounds. He was joined in double-figures by Pollard and Patrick Wallace with 11 and Javis Howard finished with 10. The Bucs finished the game shooting 46 percent from the floor, but were just 6-for-23 behind the arc as they entered the game leading the league with 10.2 threes per game.
Winthrop only shot 35 percent from the field in the first half, but its aggressive play paid off as it took advantage at the foul line going 15-for-19 to hold a 40-31 lead at the break.
The lead was 12 points with 2.6 seconds remaining after Okeke knocked down two free throws, but CSU got the ball in quickly and pushed it up court and Danny Upchurch pulled up for a deep three that found the bottom of the net to cut the Bucs deficit to single-digits.
CSU led 4-0 early on, but the Eagles reeled off 15 straight points over the next six minutes to grab a double-figure lead with 12:05 left in the half. Winthrop continued to deny CSU on the defensive end as it held the Bucs without a field goal for nine minutes and 13 seconds and led 27-10 with just over eight left. Johnson highlighted the Eagles 15-0 run with a couple of threes and then helped the Eagles pushed their lead from nine points to 15 points with back-to-back threes.
From that point the Bucs chipped away at the double-figure deficit and got within eight points at the 4:12 mark after Wheeler scored on a drive to the basket for the second straight possession to make it 29-21. Even though the Bucs had a nine minute span without a field goal and going 2-for-9 from three in the first half, they shot 42 percent from the floor.
