2021-22 Winthrop Men’s Basketball Season – GAME #3
Final Score: Middle Tennessee 76, Winthrop 65
Winthrop’s first road game of the 2021-22 season did not go as hoped for the Eagles. Despite holding a halftime lead, WU trailed for most of the contest, and Middle Tennessee took over early in the second half and handed the Eagles a 76-65 loss in Murfreesboro.
The positives:
-After some struggles in the Mercer game, Josh Corbin hit 4 for 9 from three point range to tie for a team high 14 points.
-The other Eagle to score 14 points was DJ Burns, who barely played in the first half due to foul trouble, but was an efficient 6 for 10 from the field in the contest.
The negatives:
-WU had a very tough time with Middle Tennessee’s defensive pressure at times, which led to 17 turnovers (12 of them being MTSU steals), and many of those turnovers led to immediate points, as the Blue Raiders scored 29 points off of WU turnovers. If you look at the turnover numbers alone, it looked pretty even, as Middle Tennessee turned it over 15 times on their end…but WU could not turn those into points (only 3 points off turnovers for the Eagles).
-WU did a good job of getting to the FT line in the first half, but unfortunately the team shot 8 for 17 (47.1%) in the first half when they did get to the line. In the second half, WU only shot two FTs (making both). That led to a 12 point difference in points from the stripe, as MTSU was a very efficient 22 for 27 (81.5%) from the FT line.
-The Eagles did not rebound well at all, only finishing with 4 offensive boards (none in the first half). MTSU had 9 offensive rebounds.
Final takeaways:
It was an ugly game most of the way…even when WU briefly led, it wasn’t as if the team was playing that well. I probably could have listed several more ‘negatives’, but I just felt like hitting the major general points and not nitpick every little thing. WU just never seemed to find a rhythm in the game, and the defensive pressure that MTSU put on the Eagles, which led to sloppy passes and turnovers, really flustered Winthrop at times and the team seemed to lose its composure at points in the game. Heck, there was even a member of the WU bench that got ejected at one point. Every once in a while, even a good team will have a clunker like this, so it isn’t necessarily a sign of things to come, though it is obvious that there are areas that this team needs to improve upon (FT shooting and rebounding are definitely high on that list). The Eagles have three more road games in this stretch, all against power conference schools. They need to learn from this game, but also put it behind them, as there are opportunities to get wins on this trip, and to make up for what looks like a bad loss on paper at this point.
Next game:
WU @ Vanderbilt – Saturday, November 20, 2021, 8:00pm EST
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