Rock Hill Herald
It has been a crazy couple of weeks for head basketball coach, Pat Kelsey to say the least.
If you havent been following along, let me catch you up.
March 5, 2017: Winthrop won the Big South Conference Tournament after they beat Campbell University 76-59. This is also the day that Winthrop recieved their automatic bid to the NCAA March Madness Tournament.
March 16, 2017: Unfortunately, Winthrop lost in the first round of the NCAA March Madness Tournament to Butler University 64-76. This was Winthrop’s 10th NCAA Tournament appearance. They have only advanced to the second round once in school history.
March 21, 2017: Just 5 days after Winthrop’s NCAA Tournament loss, Coach Kelsey accepted the head coaching position at the University of Massachusetts.
This is where things get really crazy…
Today, March 23, at 4 p.m. UMass and Coach Kesley were supposed to hold his first offical press conference as head coach. The press conference was suddenly cancelled with very little details being released. At 4:09 p.m., Jeff Goodman, a verified ESPN basketball insider tweeted…
I could not believe it. This news sent Twitter into a frenzy. Where would Coach Kelsey end up now??
There was a lot of speculation that he was offered the head coaching position at Georgetown University after they fired their current head coach John Thompson III. More rumors circulated that maybe Kelsey had hopes of returning to his alma mater, Xavier University, who is currently still competing in the NCAA Tournament and is rumored to possibly be losing their head coach, Chris Mack, to Indiana University once the season ends. There were even a few rumors swarming that Coach would come back to Rock the Hill for a little bit longer. These were all #QTNA.
And then, at 6:59, the sports editor of the Rock Hill Herald, Bret McCormick, tweeted a link to his most recent article that confirmed that coach Pat Kelsey would be returning to Winthrop as head basketball coach, and shortly after, Winthrop released their own statement confirming yet again, that Kelsey would remain Winthrop’s head basketball coach.
I know, it’s a lot to take in. But as of right now, Pat Kelsey is our head coach.
We will be sure to update this article as more information becomes available.
Welcome back Coach, it’s like you never even left!