ROCK HILL, SC--The Winthrop men's basketball team has achieved another first in school and Big South Conference basketball history as it cracked this week's USA Today/ESPN and Associated Press Top 25 national rankings..
Coach Gregg Marshall’s Eagles are ranked 22nd in the USA Today/
ESPN poll and 24th in the AP Top 25 poll which was released on Monday. Winthrop cracked the top 25 rankings on the strength of
having the nation’s second longest winning streak that currently stands
at 18 and by capturing the 2007 Big South Conference Championship Tournament last weekend to improve its season record to 28-4. The 28 victories broke Winthrop’s own Div. I school record and the Big South Conference record for wins in a single season.
Word quickly spread across the Winthrop campus and around the community early Monday afternoon when the polls were released. The news comes on the heels of last week’s national publicity in the USA Today and the New York Times.
In the USA Today/ESPN poll, Winthrop was only four points shy of tying No. 21 Duke and 33 points ahead of Virginia, the top seed in this week’s ACC tournament.
For Marshall and his team, the news was exciting and long-awaited.
The Eagles have played the most challenging non-conference schedule
in its history with the four losses all coming to teams ranked 20 or
better in the polls—North Carolina, Maryland, Wisconsin (in overtime)
and Texas A&M. Winthrop also claimed key victories over Mississippi State, the Southeastern Conference’s Western Division winner, Old Dominion, a Colonial Conference power, and Missouri State, out of the vaunted Missouri Valley Conference. Six of those games were on the road with the other (North Carolina) coming on a neutral court in Charlotte, NC.
“This is a validation for this team and for this program and what we have worked toward for the last nine years,” said Marshall, who has now guided seven of his nine Winthrop teams to the NCAA tournament. “I think this (the rankings) is a great honor for this particular team to be the first team in Winthrop and Big South Conference basketball history to be ranked in the Top 25. I think it is very deserving. They have worked extremely hard and are a very talented and dangerous group of players
at this point for anyone to face.”
