How Coastal Carolina fared with a title at stake in its final basketball game of the year
Coastal Carolina had an opportunity to make a season that was notable for the coronavirus pandemic even more memorable with a college basketball championship on Wednesday night.
But the Chanticleers fell behind Pepperdine by 20 points in the first half and were never able to make a run at the Waves, falling 84-61 in the title game of the College Basketball Invitational at the Ocean Center in Daytona Beach, Florida.
Pepperdine (15-12) closed the first half on a 23-4 run to take an 18-point lead into halftime. Coastal cut the lead to 12 points early in the second half before the Waves opened up a 28-point lead with 9 minutes to play.
Coastal finishes the season 18-8 after going 9-5 in the Sun Belt Conference regular season and losing in overtime to eventual champion Appalachian State in the conference tournament semifinals.
Coastal defeated Bryant 93-82 in the quarterfinals and Stetson 77-72 in overtime in the semifinals of the eight-team CBI, which was pared down from 16 teams and held at one site for the first time because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“What a year this team had,” Coastal head coach Cliff Ellis told WRNN FM 99.5 following the game. “. . . This is a special group. We’ve had to deal with COVID and these guys never, ever, ever had a COVID issue through the course of the year. That says a lot. They did all the things they needed to do.”
Ellis recorded a milestone during the three-day event, notching his 876th college basketball win in the semis, which matches the total of legendary Kentucky coach Adolph Rupp at 15th all-time in NCAA history across all divisions.
Ellis is three wins behind North Carolina legend Dean Smith, 24 behind Bob Huggins, 26 behind Bobby Knight and 27 behind Roy Williams.
He is two wins shy of 800 as a Division I head coach at South Alabama, Clemson, Auburn and Coastal.
In his bid for win 877 on Wednesday, Coastal held an 18-17 lead 11:30 into the game but gave up an 18-0 run. CCU went scoreless for nearly seven minutes and did not hit a field goal over the final 10:48 of the first half, missing its final 11 shots.
Starters Garrick Green and DeVante Jones, the 2020 Sun Belt Conference Player of the Year, were scoreless in the first half with three fouls apiece. Green was shut out in the game, and Jones finished with eight points, five rebounds and two steals in 28 minutes.
Guard Deantony Tipler had a team-high 16 points with four 3-pointers, and center Essam Mostafa scored 15 points with five rebounds while battling through an ankle injury suffered Tuesday night, when he recorded 22 points and 12 rebounds in the win over Stetson.
Point guard Tyrik Dixon suffered a hip pointer early and played just three minutes, compounding CCU’s loss of playing time by key guards to foul trouble, particularly in the first half.
CCU committed 19 turnovers that were converted into 26 Waves points and forced just 10 turnovers.
“We got off to a good start, but DJ got in foul trouble and we had to take him out of the game . . . and that was a killer. And Garrick Green was the same situation,” Ellis told WRNN. “We played with unorthodox lineups that we haven’t played with since probably December. So the first half was just too big of a hole. When you have those lineups that are not usual lineups the turnover bugger comes and gets you, and we had 19 turnovers tonight. That’s what a Pepperdine team will do, and they turned them into points.”
Pepperdine (15-12) has a pair of players who are considered NBA prospects in 6-1 senior guard Colbey Ross and 6-8 junior forward Kessler Edwards. Ross had 15 points and seven assists Wednesday, while Edwards had nine points, six rebounds and four blocks while playing through foul trouble.
Guard Darryl Polk Jr. had a game-high 19 points, and Pepperdine shot 50 percent from the field.
The Waves had a solid season and nearly pulled off a pair of impressive wins.
They fell in triple overtime to UCLA, which is playing in the Sweet 16 in the NCAA Tournament, and lost in overtime to NCAA Tournament No. 6 seed BYU in the West Coast Conference Tournament after falling by three to the Cougars during the regular season.
Coastal played in the CBI tournament for the third time in the past five years. It also played in 2017 and 2019, and has had success in each instance.
In 2017, the Chants lost the best-of-three championship series to Wyoming after wins against Hampton, Loyola Maryland and Illinois-Chicago. In 2019, they reached the semifinals with wins over Howard and West Virginia before a loss at DePaul.
This story was originally published March 24, 2021 at 10:43 PM.
