ROCK HILL, SC—Winthrop's 29 turnovers and College of Charleston's torrid shooting to start the second half led to a 95-64 Cougar victory Wednesday night in a game that saw Erica Williams score a career-high 28 points for the Eagles.
 
Charleston is now 1-1 on the season while Winthrop drops to 1-2 as it now prepares to face East Tennessee State on Sunday afternoon in Johnson City, TN. Charleston has now won 27 of the 30 games in the series.
 
The Cougars' threesome of Breanna Bolden Tanishia Brown and Darien Huff combined for 61 points as they took advantage of Winthrop's floor mistakes that led to 34 points off turnovers. Bolden led CofC with 22 followed by Brown with 20 and Huff with 19.  Those three also connected on 24 of 34 field goals.
 
"I thought we were prepared for the press, but we were obviously not," said Winthrop head coach Kevin Cook. "During one of our timeouts I told our team to throw the ball to the team in the white shirts."
 
In addition to Williams' 28 points, Danyael Goodhope and Naima Jackson finished with 10 points each.  Williams also pulled down 10 rebounds to record the 28^th double-double of her career.
 
Charleston shot 50 percent in the first half to build a 17-point lead and then came out in the third quarter to connect on 13 of 20 (65 pct.) as it outscored Winthrop 26-7 to begin the second half to take its largest lead of the game at 75-39 with 3:28 left in the period. The Cougars finished the night shooting 49.4 percent (38-77) compared to 42.9 percent for Winthrop (27-63).
 
Winthrop found itself behind 49-32 at halftime as the Cougars finished the half on a 17-5 run over the final six minutes of the second quarter.  The Eagles had just cut a 14 point Charleston lead to five at 32-27 as they went on a 9-0 run highlighted by back-to-back baskets by Goodhope.
 
Williams gave Winthrop's its only lead of the game in the opening 62 seconds as she nailed a 3-pointer from the deep left corner.  Charleston responded with an 11-0 run to go up 13-3 just over four minutes into the first quarter.
 
The visitors led 25-16 after one period and quickly jumped out in front by 14 points at 32-18 after a 1 minute, 28 seconds had elapsed in the second quarter on a baseline jumper by Brown.  Winthrop then made its run to cut the lead to only five, but never got closer the remainder of the contest.
 
Charleston scored 23 of its first half points as the result of 17 Eagle turnovers.  Three Cougars reached double figures by halftime as Bolden led the way with 15.