FARMVILLE, Va. – All-Big South forward Xavier Cooks scored 26 points and led a second-half charge that saw Winthrop overcome a three-point halftime deficit to take down Longwood 95-78 Wednesday evening in Willett Hall.
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Cooks led the way for Winthrop's Big South-leading offense, finishing 11-of-16 from the field and dishing a team-high six assists. The 20-point game was his fifth of the season and led the Eagles (12-8, 6-3 Big South) to their fifth straight win and a spot in the top three of the Big South standings.
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With Cooks doing his damage inside, Winthrop's backcourt went to work from long range as guards Anders Broman, Bjorn Broman, Adam Pickett and Kyle Zunic all scored in double figures as well. Anders Broman finished with 18 points, knocking down 7-of-11 shots from the field including three three-pointers.
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Longwood (6-16, 3-6 Big South) and Winthrop traded hot starts to each half with the Lancers opening the game on a 16-5 run en route to a 44-41 halftime lead. Longwood redshirt senior
B.K. Ashe played foil to Cook in that opening stanza, carrying Longwood with 21 points and four of the Lancers' nine three-pointers that half.
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However, the Eagles responded after the break, stringing together a 26-5 run over the first 10 minutes of the second half to turn that three-point deficit into a double-digit lead that never dipped below 13 the rest of the way. Winthrop locked down on Ashe, and Cooks, who scored 14 points in the first half, yielded to guard Anders Broman, who took over with 14 points of his own in the second half.
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"At the end of the half, we started to double [Cooks], and that may have been too little too late," said Longwood head coach
Jayson Gee. "It's almost like choose your poison. What do you want to do, because he creates such a problem. At the end of the day, you try to live with it. We started to run at him, but it was just too little too late."
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Winthrop turned up the defensive pressure on Longwood after halftime as well, as the Lancers opened the game shooting .600 (15-of-25) from the field and three-point range (9-of-15) but saw those shooting clips drop below 40 percent in the second half. Longwood knocked down a season-high 14 three-pointers and shot .483 from beyond the arc, but needed a season-high 29 attempts to get there.
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"That second half when we got down, I thought we could have done a better job with spreading the court and ball movement and player movement," Gee said. "I think we were just trying to get it all back at once. Winthrop is a good veteran team, and they took advantage of that."
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Despite Longwood entering the game with the Big South's top three-point defense, the Eagles were also able to keep pace from long range hitting 11-of-25 three-pointers. Broman hit three of those, while Zunic hit 3-of-4 off the bench.
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Ashe finished with a team-high 24 points for the Lancers, matching a career high with five three-pointers.
Charles Glover added 13 points,
Isaiah Walton finished 12 and
Spencer Franklin added 10.
Damarion Geter, who was limited to just 28 minutes due to foul trouble, turned in his second straight double-digit rebound game, grabbing 10 boards to go with five points and five assists.
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Longwood's 44 first-half points were the team's most in a first half since dropping 46 in a 76-53 win over Campbell on Feb. 15, 2014. The nine first-half three-pointers also set a new season high and were Longwood's most since hitting 11 in the second half of an 87-72 loss at Saint Francis on Nov. 23, 2016.
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Longwood will now embark on a two-game road trip that sends them to Gardner-Webb and Presbyterian on Jan. 27 and Feb. 1. The Lancers took down Gardner-Webb 79-73 in the first meeting this season and fell 78-65 against Presbyterian.
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