Enthusiastic CCU men’s hoops squad welcomes dawn of new era

A lot of enthusiasm surrounds the Coastal Carolina men’s basketball team as it prepares for a tough early season schedule during its first year as a member of the Sun Belt Conference.

The Chanticleers will open the season Friday as they travel to Tuscaloosa, Ala. to take on the Alabama Crimson Tide at 9 p.m., and Coastal Carolina feels confident that after a long preseason of gelling and growing together that the team has a good shot for success.

“I think as far as chemistry, we’ve gotten a lot better. We’re coming together, learning each other’s tendencies and I think we’re set to go on Friday,” senior swingman Colton Ray St-Cyr said. “Obviously the early schedule is going to be really tough, there’s a lot of tests coming up for us. Seeing how we’re gelling so well, I think that’ll help us pick up some ‘Ws’ along the way. There’s going to be some better and bigger competition so we’ll see how we fare against those physical guys.”

Chants head coach Cliff Ellis joins the Sun Belt for the first time since 1984, when he left South Alabama for a job at Clemson, where he spent 10 seasons before heading to Auburn and then Coastal Carolina.

Ellis said there will be some added excitement for him personally as the team takes on some familiar faces.

“There’s a lot of nostalgia. I helped form the [Sun Belt] in 1976, so, you know, I go back to the early days just sitting around the table with some great people and being a part of the Sun Belt,” Ellis said. “South Alabama is one of two original members still in the conference, them and Georgia State. South Alabama would certainly be a tremendous experience, and all those Louisiana schools we played back in the day. So, I look forward to that but there’s a lot of work to be done before we get to the Sun Belt. But it’s going to be a tough task, I’ll tell you that.”

Coastal Carolina opens the season fairly healthy, and are really only dealing with one injury as Michel Enanaga remains sidelined from a recurring knee injury that kept him out for most of last season as well.

Ellis said Enanaga won’t be ready for the season opener.

“I think the health is much better. Enanga has still not recovered, but other than that we’ve been pretty healthy,” said Ellis.

The team will open the season being led at the point by junior Jaylan Robertson, while Elijah Wilson will start at shooting guard, St-Cyr will be the starting small forward and junior Joseph Williams-Powell will be the starting small forward, while sophomore Josh Coleman gears up for his first season as the starting center.

“I think everyone is excited. Early on everybody’s ready to go, everybody is antsy, hungry and ready to tip it up. It’s been a six week preseason with Hurricane Matthew in the way a little bit. But I think everyone is ready to go. We’ve got six new faces and they need experience and the only way they’re going to get that is to go from practice to games, and get baptized so to speak.”

Meanwhile, guard Jaylen Shaw may move into the starting lineup but Ellis regarded to him as one of the team’s most talented players and said he will see plenty of minutes on the floor.

“I feel like he’s a starter. He’s so good, he’s one of our two or three best players,” Ellis said. “We’ll see whether we want to play him at the 1 or the 2, but I consider him a starter.”

Juniors Demario Beck and Robertson, and freshmen Artur Labinowicz, Josh Peterson and Amidou Bamba are the newcomers on the team and will get a chance to log some quality minutes in preparation of the Sun Belt slate, when they may be needed most.

“I’ve been pleased with all of them,” Ellis said. “And I think all of our returners have showed improvement and our new guys are talented and we’re ready to see what we can do.”

St-Cyr said that Ellis is among one of the top coaches in all of college basketball and that the team has full faith in him.

“Oh yeah, definitely. We have a lot of trust in coach,” he said. “We know when he makes a [scouting report] it’s likely going to be 100 percent right. There’s not going to be any flaws in his advice either, so if we just execute what he says we’ll always have a chance to win.”

Last year, the Chants were eliminated in the quarterfinals of their final Big South Conference tournament, and made the CollegeInsider.com Tournament before losing to UC Irvine in the semifinals.

“Going back to last year, that gives us a lot of motivation,” Shaw said. “We just want to keep pushing and we know in a new conference that we need to keep getting it done and do a lot better than we did last year.”

After Alabama on Friday, the Chants’ schedule doesn’t exactly get much easier. Coastal Carolina hosts College of Charleston in their home opener on Monday before the MGM Grand Main Event tournament in which the Chants will see Coppin State, BYU, Southern Utah and Wake Forest.

Coastal Carolina will also take on Auburn, one of the schools Ellis once coached at, in a much anticipated rematch.

“It’s going to be a tough task. Those early games on the schedule will be good preparation for us going into our first year in the Sun Belt and make our team ready,” Ellis said. “It’s going to be among the toughest non-conference schedule we’ve faced here. Reason being, we’ve had so much success that we can’t get many people to play us. The teams that will play us are Power 5 [conference] type teams. So it is what it is. But these games will certainly get us ready for the Sun Belt.”

This story was originally published November 11, 2016 at 3:45 PM with the headline "Enthusiastic CCU men’s hoops squad welcomes dawn of new era."