LEXINGTON, VA - Junior guard Micheal Jenkins scored 23 second-half points on his way to a game-high 28 points as Winthrop ran its Big South record to 8-0 with a 109-96 win over VMI Wednesday night before 2,453 Cameron Hall spectators.
It matched the best conference start for a Winthrop team since the 1998-99 squad jumped to an 8-0 start in conference play. The Eagles pushed their overall record to 18-4 while VMI fell to 10-14 and 3-5 in the BSC.
Winthrop Senior Craig Bradshaw scored 27 points, hitting 12 of 16 shots from the floor and grabbing a game-high 15 rebounds. Senior forward Phillip Williams scored 16 points while junior forward Taj McCullough added 14 points.
VMI junior forward Reggie Williams, the nation's second leading scorer, led the Keydets with 19 points, but well below his 28.7 points per game average. Sophomore guards Chavis and Travis Holmes each scored 17 points.
VMI played toe-to-toe with Eagles in the first 20 minutes, taking a 51-51 score into the locker room. The Keydets hit nine 3-pointers in the first frame and got a boost from freshman point guard Adam Lonon who hit four of six shots from the field and four of five from the line for a career-high 12 points. But Williams and Bradshaw combined by hitting 11 of 12 shots from the floor to help the Eagles overcome a slow start when VMI raced to a 23-14 lead at the 13:12 mark following a Dusty Pflugner 3-pointner from the left wing.
The game remained tight for the first eight minutes of the second half as Travis Holmes hit a layup to pull VMI within 69-67 with 11:54 left. But Winthrop responded with a 13-0 run over the next two and a half minutes to take control as Jenkins capped the run with a jumper to push Winthrop ahead, 82-67, at the 9:32 mark.
VMI trailed by single digits as late as the 6:05 mark when Reggie Williams nailed a triple to make it 91-82, but Bradshaw responded with a layup 12 seconds later and the Eagles never saw their lead shrink below 10 points the rest of the evening.
Winthrop shot 58.1% for the game (43-74) and held a 58-31 advantage on the boards.
The Keydets, facing a Winthrop team that was holding Big South opponents to 37% shooting entering the game, shot 40.8% from the floor and scored the most points in regulation against any Greg-Marshall coached team at Winthrop. But the Keydets were held under 100 points for only the third time in 11 home games.
Junior forward Taj McCullough dished out seven assists to lead the Eagles while Reggie Williams had five assists for the Keydets.
VMI travels to Conway, S.C. Saturday to face Coastal Carolina at 2:00 p.m. Winthrop travels to UNC Asheville Saturday for a 4:30 tip-off.
VMI Head Coach Duugar Baucom - "I was pleased in the first half and I was pleased with our effort throughout. I thought in the second half, our execution wasn't very stellar. Our effort was very, very good the entire 40 minutes, I thought. Winthrop is good, very good. Micheal Jenkins is a very good player and he knocked down those little 12-footers that we want teams to shoot and he knocked those down. You have to pick your poison with them. I thought we ran out of gas a little bit. They got very physical defensively and I didn't think we really responded to the challenge. We got a bunch of shots inside and didn't convert them, and then got to the foul line and didn't make those, so that's not good either. Hopefully, it is something we can work on to get better at. We got off to a good start and Adam Lonon was awesome. He by far had his best game of the year and played really well and within himself and Dusty Pflugner gave us an unbelievable 12 minutes. That's the best our point guards have played without a doubt this year."
