Wake Forest holds off late Chanticleer rally

Just as it did with Auburn earlier this month, just as it’s done so often in these sort of marquee games, the Coastal Carolina men’s basketball team put itself in position to potentially score a significant upset Friday night.

Trailing by as many as 14 points in the second half at Wake Forest, the Chanticleers trimmed their deficit all the way down to two in the final minutes, but that’s as close as it would get.

The host Demon Deacons eventually closed out an 83-77 victory inside Lawrence Joel Veterans Memorial Coliseum, and while he was certainly encouraged by the effort, Chants coach Cliff Ellis reiterated afterward that his team had come to win.

“We know we can play with them, but moral victories aren’t good enough, as far as we’re concerned,” Ellis said.

Nonetheless, that’s twice now this month the Chants (6-5) have pushed an opponent from a traditional power conference to the brink of an upset, including that 81-78 loss to Auburn back on Dec. 2.

Senior forward Badou Diagne played one of his best games as a Chant, scoring a season-high 24 points on 9-of-11 shooting (4-of-5 from 3-point range) along with seven rebounds. Sophomore guard Jaylen Shaw added a season-high 21 points on 7-of-11 shooting with seven assists. And as a whole, Coastal Carolina shot 65.4 percent in the second half to get back into the game.

The difference, Ellis felt, was the 34-25 rebounding advantage Wake Forest (8-2) earned with its size advantage.

“We just kept fighting the whole time,” Shaw said. “Rebounding hurt us a little bit, but we still kept fighting. It was a way for us to get better as a whole.”

Wake Forest is a team on the rise in its second year under head coach Danny Manning, having already picked up big wins over Indiana, UCLA and Arkansas, and for most of the evening Friday the Demon Deacons were giving the Chants very few openings to climb back into the game.

But like Shaw said, the Chants were persistent.

After Wake Forest pushed its lead back to 12 at 71-59 with less than eight minutes remaining, Coastal Carolina started chipping away at that deficit again.

Shaw dropped in a short floater, junior point guard Shivaughn Wiggins added two free throws a couple possessions later and Diagne followed with a 3 from the wing for a 7-0 run to make it 71-66 with 5:10 remaining.

It was later a six-point game when Diagne drove through the lane and banked in a shot to make it 77-73 with 1:50 on the clock.

The next time down court, Shaw was fouled and knocked down two free throws to make it 77-75 with 1:23 remaining.

The Demon Deacons would have the final, surge, though.

Dinos Mitoglou worked his way to the line for two free throws, Coastal Carolina freshman Kevin Holmes Jr. missed a 3-pointer on the other end, and Wake Forest added a layup from Greg McClinton to start pulling away for good.

Bryant Crawford led Wake Forest with 19 points and five 3s as one of five Demon Deacons to score in double figures.

“We were scoring, but we couldn’t get the stops we needed. And when we did get a stop, they might have gotten a rebound that we didn’t need to have happen,” Ellis said. “But our guys fought. They’re a little longer, they’re a little bit stronger, but we had a chance.”

Diagne finished just two points shy of his career high and scored 15 of his 24 points after halftime.

“Everybody can shoot it on the court, so I just try to get an open shot, get the open lane and my teammates found me at the right spot and the right time,” he said of his big game. “I didn’t try to force anything, just let the game come to me.”

Shaw meanwhile excelled in his return to the starting lineup, replacing injured junior Colton Ray-St Cyr (broken wrist). The Chants’ depth was depleted entering this game with Ray-St Cyr now out six weeks and senior forward Michel Enanga headed for knee surgery.

With those two missing, junior guard Ron Trapps (10 minutes, two points), Holmes (20 minutes, three points) and freshman guard Christian Adams (three minutes) all saw an increase in usage.

“Right now we’re going through some injuries. We’ve been battling injuries throughout this year big time. It seems like every time we take a step forward, something happens to take us back,” Ellis said. “Maybe we took a step forward because we played three guys tonight that hadn’t played very many minutes. And they did a good job. Our starting five is still good, but we had to build with our depth and they kept it close where we could go down the stretch with our starters and be able to [have] a chance.

“I take away that our new team – because it seems we’ve had about four teams this year with all that’s happened – our new team really got a good baptism today and did OK and kept us in the game.”

There may be no moral victories, but after three straight wins and now a narrow loss to a good Wake Forest team, the Chants seem to be trending upward as non-conference play winds down.

“Although we wanted to win, yeah, we’re going to be real confident for the next one,” Shaw said. “We feel like we should have got this one. It got away from us, but if we had played the way we played in the second half the whole game, we feel like we could have gotten this one.”

This story was originally published December 18, 2015 at 10:30 PM with the headline "Wake Forest holds off late Chanticleer rally."