Auburn holds off CCU comeback bid for narrow win

Auburn basketball coach Bruce Pearl didn’t wait for a question or a cue to give an opening statement, and he had barely even taken his seat in the postgame media session before paying respect to his coaching counterpart Wednesday night.

“When I’m asked who are the best coaches I’ve gone up against in my career, I always start off with Rick Pitino. It seemed like he was in my huddle and knew what I wanted to do and knew how I wanted to do it and was able to take it away from us,” Pearl started. “And I have to say after going up against Cliff the last couple of years, he’s in the top-five all-time for me of the guys I’ve gone up against.”

A year after leading his Coastal Carolina men’s basketball team to an upset win on the road at Auburn, coach Cliff Ellis and his Chanticleers nearly erased an 18-point second-half deficit to pull off another stunner.

The Chants clawed to within one point in the final minute, but junior Shivaughn Wiggins’ potential game-tying 3-pointer in the final seconds went off the rim as Auburn held on for an 81-78 win before a packed house of 3,286 fans inside The HTC Center.

It was the second meeting in a two-for-one three-game series that started last December with Coastal Carolina’s 58-54 win in Auburn, Ala., and Pearl made it clear afterward that when the series wraps up he wants no more games against Ellis’ Chants.

Ellis, meanwhile, opened his postgame address with a thanks to Pearl for bringing his team to Conway. The veteran head coach has prided himself on using his coaching connections to lure marquee opponents here, while also having considerable success in those games as well.

Since the 2010-11 season, the Chants are now a respectable 5-8 in regular-season games against teams from the traditional power conferences while nearly adding another momentous win Wednesday night.

“It’s a tough loss, but at the same point in time I can’t fault our guys,” Ellis said. “They gave it everything that they had. We just missed some shots and they made some shots, and in the end we just couldn’t make that last basket to send it to overtime.”

Junior guard Elijah Wilson played the starring role in the near-comeback for Coastal Carolina (3-4), scoring a game-high 25 points while connecting on 6-of-10 3-pointers (including 5-of-7 from long-range in the second half).

Wiggins finished with 17 points, senior forward Tristian Curtis added 11 points and six rebounds and senior forward Michel Enanga had nine points and 11 boards off the bench for the Chants.

Tyler Harris, meanwhile, led Auburn (4-1) with 21 points and 12 rebounds as one of six Tigers to score in double figures.

“We’re a little upset, but also we’ve got to give big credit to everybody on the team. We didn’t give up,” Wilson said. “We’re not a team that’s going to give up and just roll over and quit, so we tried to do the best we could do to try to fight back and get back into the game and try to win it, but we just fell short this time.”

Barely.

After Auburn went up 69-51 midway through the second half, the Chants found a late surge of momentum to battle back into the game.

Wilson drained a long 3-pointer from the top of the key to make it a 77-68 game, Curtis followed with an emphatic dunk of an inbounds pass from junior Colton Ray-St Cyr and Wilson soon hit another 3 to cut the deficit to 78-73 with 1:01 left.

The crowd was on its feet and raucous as Auburn’s Cinmeon Bowers missed two free throws with 43.5 seconds remaining, and Enanga drew a foul on the rebound and proceeded to knock down two free throws to make it a 78-75 game.

“The crowd was great,” Wiggins said. “The crowd really helped us out. They get us pumped up on defense, bring a little energy to you and they really helped us comeback today.”

After Bowers made one of two free throws on the Tigers’ next possession, Wilson continued his hot shooting with a turn-around catch-and-shoot 3-pointer from the top of the arc to make it a one-point game at 79-78.

The Chants fouled Auburn point guard Kareem Canty with 11.7 seconds left and he made both free throws to push the lead to 81-78.

Wiggins then tried to get the ball back to Wilson on the final possession, but the Auburn defense didn’t make that possible so the point guard took a leaning 3-pointer from the right wing that came out low and hit off the rim to end the comeback.

“[Wilson] was hot, I was trying to get it to him,” Wiggins said. “They switched out on him and we had to get a look up, the clock was running down and I thought we had a decent look at it.”

Coastal Carolina put a scare into Auburn despite shooting just 40.3 percent from the field.

With the two leading scorers from the Chants’ 2014-15 team gone with the departures of Warren Gillis and Josh Cameron, Ellis feels his squad is still searching for its offensive identity.

Wilson is a strong centerpiece and is now averaging 15.4 points per game, but Ellis said finding those consistent complimentary scorers is key moving forward.

“We really struggled the first 30 minutes offensively, period. Everybody was struggling,” he said. “In the last 10 minutes when we went to a scramble defense, it just seemed to start clicking a little bit. Right now we’re trying to find ourselves [without] Warren and Josh.”

As for his performance taking over down the stretch, Wilson was typically deferential.

“I give credit to my teammates. They trust me to take shots like that, but I’m not trying to be the man,” he said. “I’m just trying to do whatever it takes to win, and I wouldn’t be able to do that without my teammates so all the credit goes out to them.”

In the big picture, while the Chants may have only one win over a Division I opponent at this point, they showed Wednesday night what they’re capable of with their potential.

“When we got down, a lot of people [would] put their head down and quit,” Wiggins said. “I think we did a good job of fighting back. We’ll be alright.”

This story was originally published December 2, 2015 at 9:27 PM with the headline "Auburn holds off CCU comeback bid for narrow win."