Chants ailing as Big South soccer tournament begins

After a scorching start that catapulted the Coastal Carolina men’s soccer team to a program-best No. 4 national ranking, the Chanticleers have been beset by injuries and now open the Big South tournament with a must-win game, as coach Shaun Docking sees it.

The No. 3-seeded Chants (12-2-3) host No. 6 High Point (7-6-5) on Tuesday night, and Docking said his team needs to take care of business to maximize its chances of potentially earning an at-large berth into the NCAA tournament if it doesn’t win the conference championship outright this week.

“We’ve got to win tomorrow night,” Docking said Monday. “If you don’t win tomorrow night then you’ve got no shot at getting an at-large bid, I don’t know. So for us we’re just trying to take it game by game, and the most import thing is we’re trying to see if we can put in a good performance tomorrow night. If we do that then we’ll hopefully be able to get the result we need.”

After starting the season 12-1-1, the Chants have gone 0-1-2 while being held scoreless in their last three games.

Not coincidentally, that scoreless stretch has come since senior forward Bryce Follensbee (team-high seven goals) was lost for the season with a knee injury.

Beyond Follensbee, Docking expects the Chants to be missing as many as six or seven starters Tuesday night due to a rash of untimely injuries.

Sophomore defender Elis Bjornsson is out with a hamstring injury; junior defender Miguel Gutierrez and sophomore forward Arnar Geirsson are also out with injuries; junior midfielder Sergio Camargo (four goals, four assists) is limited by “severe pain” in his shoulder and it is not known how much he’ll be able to play Tuesday night; and senior forward Tobenna Uzo (five goals, six assists) has been playing through a knee injury that has been limiting his mobility.

“It’s very frustrating,” Docking said. “You look at the first six weeks of the season and we were 7-0-1, then we went through those rainouts where the games all got backed up and we didn’t play games or really train. Then we took the loss to UNC Asheville and it just started from there. The second half of the season just hasn’t been what we were hoping.”

Nonetheless, the Chants boast a strong resume with their overall record, their impressive early non-conference wins and had a No. 11 national ranking in the lastest National Soccer Coaches Association of America poll released last Tuesday.

The NCAA tournament field consists of 48 teams, and no matter what happens this week, the Chants would be hard to ignore.

As Docking said, though, the outcome Tuesday night would no doubt greatly help Coastal Carolina’s chances.

And as he also made the point, it won’t be easy.

The Chants just played to a scoreless draw at High Point on Nov. 4 and now must put together a better game while continuing to play without so many key pieces.

“It’s a very difficult game for us,” Docking said. “We tied 0-0 up there. I thought they were very good. They had a couple players out that they were resting for the game they’re going to play [Tuesday], and they had some good chances against us. So for us it’s a very difficult game. The conference games are always difficult, and this year in particular the conference is very strong.”

NOTES

Senior midfielder Colin Marz was named a first-team All-Big South selection while Uzo was voted a first-team alternate.

Camargo, sophomore midfielder Louis Dargent, junior defender Einar Einarsson and Bjornsson were second-team selections from the Chants, and Follensbee and junior goalkeeper Fernando Pina were honorable mentions.

This story was originally published November 9, 2015 at 8:02 PM with the headline "Chants ailing as Big South soccer tournament begins."