Seeding at stake as CCU basketball winds down regular season

Talking before practice Tuesday, Coastal Carolina basketball coach Cliff Ellis spent a couple of minutes breaking down the Big South Conference tournament possibilities for his Chanticleers before exhaling with a sigh.

Although Coastal only has two games remaining in the regular season, a number of scenarios remain in play for the team as it jockeys for tournament seeding.

Very simply, the Chants know they can do themselves a big favor by winning these final couple of games, beginning Thursday night at Liberty.

“I personally don’t look at the standings, but we’ve been talking about it,” junior guard Anthony Raffa said. “We need to win these two games this weekend, and we can control second or third place.”

That’s the best the Chants (18-9, 11-5 Big South) can do after winning the conference’s regular-season championship the last two years. UNC Asheville has already locked up that title and will host at least through the semifinals of the conference tournament, while Coastal can end up seeded anywhere from second to fourth.

“I don’t think it matters whether you’re really the two or the three seed,” Ellis said. “From that standpoint, there’s not a big difference. But there is a difference between the fourth seed and the second and third seed.”

Coastal is tied with Campbell for second in the standings, but the Fighting Camels own the tiebreaker having swept the season series. Charleston Southern, meanwhile, is just a game back with two to play and could leap over either or both teams.

As per the lineup for the tournament quarterfinals next Wednesday, the No. 2 seed gets to play the winner of the opening-round game between the No. 7 and No. 10 seeds. The No. 3 seed plays the rested No. 6 seed, and No. 4 plays No. 5.

The advantage for Coastal of avoiding the No. 4 seed is it wouldn’t have to potentially play UNC Asheville in the semifinals, and if they were to advance to the championship game and the host Bulldogs had already been eliminated, the Chants would then get to host the final game.

“There is so much water under the bridge before you get to that point, but you do want to have as much advantage as you can going into the conference tournament,” Ellis said.

So the Chants will hope to do their part, starting with a road matchup against a rejuvenated Liberty team. The Flames (12-17, 7-9) lost their first six conference games this season, but they’ve won 7 of their last 10 Big South tilts.

The month of February hasn’t gone nearly as well for Coastal, which has lost four of its last five games and besides worrying about tournament seeding has to figure out what is hindering a team that earlier this season toppled major conference foes LSU and Clemson in the span of a week.

“We’ve got to get better,” Ellis said. “I think our depth needs to play better. It’s had moments, like the Asheville game when we played well. The other day (a 77-71 loss to Tennessee Tech on Saturday) was a struggle. We’ve got to be consistent with our bench play. We’ve got to be consistent with our defense. We have not guarded in the second half of games the way we guarded in the first half. There’s just some things that we can do that we need to realize we have to do to be able to win.”

And if the Chants don’t get themselves straightened out, it might not matter where they’re seeded.

That said, the players still project plenty of confidence heading into this pivotal final two-game stretch that concludes Saturday at VMI.

“I think we’re hungry,” junior guard Danny Nieman said. “I think we know that we have a good team and we can compete. We got a big win against Asheville, which was a big confidence builder. We can play with Campbell, and we can play with every team in our league and we know we can. So we’re ready for the challenge, and we’re just going to focus on Liberty and we’re going to take it one game at a time.”

NOTES: Nieman, who has missed two of the last three games with a hip pointer injury, is expected to play Thursday night.