Arkansas Pine Bluff wins play-in game

DAYTON, Ohio — Smiling Arkansas Pine Bluff players plopped into the black folding chairs at courtside and checked their cellphones for congratulatory messages before heading out the arena door to get on yet another bus.

Finally, the Golden Lions had found a trip to their liking, in a 61-44 victory over Winthrop in the NCAA tournament’s opening game.

FOR THE RECORD:
NCAA basketball: The score line with an article in Wednesday’s Sports section about Arkansas Pine Bluff’s 61-44 win over Winthrop misspelled the Arkansas university’s name as Pine Pluff. —

The Golden Lions (18-15) will play Duke, the No. 1 seeded-team in the South Regional, on Friday in Jacksonville, Fla. — a place they somehow missed during a season-opening jaunt that nearly did them in.

“It seems like we play better on the road than we do at home because we’re so used to being on the road,” said center Lebaron Weathers said. “

Didn’t feel that way at the start of the season.

The Golden Eagles spent the first two months playing some of the country’s best teams on the road, going everywhere and getting nowhere. They dropped their first 11 games — all on the road — losing at schools such as Texas El Paso, Michigan, Oklahoma State, Georgia Tech, Missouri, Kansas State and Oregon.

Players cranked up their iPods and let their music soothe them during 13-hour bus rides across the heartland in November and December, ones that bonded them for much better things in March.

“We think it brought them together,” Coach George Ivory said. “You’ve got to stay together on the road. You get to know each other better. You go through some bumps and bruises on the road, playing in some pretty tough places.”

Winthrop (19-14) has made the tournament nine times in the last 12 years but has only one victory in all those tries.

Winthrop got the type of game it wanted, but couldn’t make a shot as another tournament slipped away. The Eagles shot 29% from the field and made two of 21 behind the three-point arc.

“We picked a bad time to have a bad game,” Coach Randy Peele said. “We played really frustrated. I hadn’t seen that from us for a while.”