Cliff Ellis earns 700th win as Coastal Carolina blasts Winthrop

Two of coach Cliff Ellis’ most significant victories during his nine seasons with the Coastal Carolina men’s basketball program have come at home against Big South rival Winthrop.

And now so too has the latest notable milestone in his accomplished career.

In what might be the last meeting for a while between the teams inside The HTC Center, the Chanticleers looked as sharp as they have all season while cruising to an 82-63 win over the Eagles on Saturday, delivering Ellis his 700th win as a Division I head coach.

“It’s not an individual honor,” Ellis said. “Seven hundred wins is a landmark, but it’s all about the players that have played. This is my fifth decade going back to the ’70s and it’s about the players, it’s about the coaches who have been with you, it’s about the managers and trainers and it’s about the administrators who gave you the opportunity. I’m very grateful to the people here who have given me the opportunity, Dr. DeCenzo.

“This is an honor for them. I represent it, strictly represent it and I’ve been truly blessed to have good people around me that have made the difference. That’s what my reflection is. I don’t want it to be about me.”

The NCAA record book actually credits Ellis with 778 victories after just recently including his 78 wins from the early 1970s at Cumberland College – then a junior college that would later become a four-year institution which now plays in the NAIA. With that, he officially ranks third among active Division I coaches in wins behind Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski and Syracuse’s Jim Boeheim and 19th all-time among coaches at any NCAA level.

But during his 38 seasons in the Division I ranks at South Alabama, Clemson, Auburn and Coastal Carolina, Ellis is now 700-441 and has reached both the 600 and 700-win milestones with the Chants.

“It was an honor to be able to be a part of something like that, something [that will] go down in history,” junior point guard Shivaughn Wiggins said.

And just like in convincing wins over Winthrop in the Big South tournament championship games the last two years inside The HTC Center – wins that propelled the program to back-to-back NCAA tournament appearances – the Chants (8-6, 2-2 Big South) were at their absolute best on Saturday against the Eagles (9-5, 2-2).

Junior guard Elijah Wilson led the way with 17 points, senior forward Badou Diagne finished with 15, sophomore guard Jaylen Shaw scored 10, senior forward Tristian Curtis totaled nine points and nine rebounds, and Wiggins added seven points, eight assists and five boards. Overall, the Chants earned a 42-28 rebounding advantage in a thoroughly dominant performance.

Diagne was especially impressive, scoring 10 of the Chants’ final 12 points during a pivotal 17-3 run late in the first half as their lead ballooned.

His highlight reel started with a thunderous alley-oop dunk as Wiggins lobbed the ball from the right wing in transition, and on the next Coastal Carolina possession Diagne drained a 3-pointer from the right corner to put the Chants up 29-19 and force Winthrop to call timeout.

“It’s not that hard to throw Badou an alley-oop,” Wiggins said. “I’m pretty sure anybody could throw him an alley-oop. Put it by the rim and he’s going to finish it every time.”

The stoppage in play didn’t slow the momentum one bit – not for the Chants or Diagne. Coming out of the timeout, freshman Kevin Holmes Jr. grabbed a steal near half-court and the ball eventually found its way to Diagne for a two-handed dunk. After Winthrop’s Zach Price converted one of two free throws, Wiggins then followed with a tough basket and two possessions later Diagne cut across the lane from left to right while dropping in a short hook shot, drawing a foul and hitting the ensuing free throw for a 36-20 lead with 2:43 left in the opening half.

“Those shots just [came] because of my teammates. I was open and they found me,” Diagne said.

The Eagles wouldn’t draw any closer than nine points the rest of the way, and when they did cut the Chants’ lead to 43-34 early in the second half Diagne and Wilson followed immediately with back-to-back 3s.

“We can’t play much better than we played,” Ellis said. “Our rebounding was so good that it turned some defensive situations into some fast breaks and got us some second and third shots. I thought that was the key, but we made some big shots.”

It may be early in the conference season, but Coastal Carolina needed this one after taking a loss at Gardner-Webb on Thursday night to drop to 1-2 in the league.

Winthrop, meanwhile, has looked like a top contender in the Big South through the first half of the season. Before dropping two straight conference games, the Eagles’ only losses had been to NC State, Georgia and Alabama.

Jimmy Gavin led the visitors with a game-high 19 points, but the Chants were able to hold Big South leading scorer Keon Johnson to just 10 points on 3-of-11 shooting with Wiggins doing the bulk of the work against him defensively.

“We knew they had Keon Johnson, he was a big-time scorer. We knew if we cut the head off the snake we’d be able to finish, and that’s what we did today,” Wiggins said.

Said Winthrop coach Pat Kelsey: “They were trying to do a good job of coralling him in transition, which is hard to do, and to really make all of his shots tough, contested shots.”

With Coastal Carolina moving to the Sun Belt Conference next season, it’s unknown if the longtime Big South rivals will schedule each other in the future. Ellis said earlier this week there had been no talks about that as of yet.

As for Ellis’ milestone win, Coastal Carolina plans to honor him before a game later this month. While he reiterated that he didn’t want it to be about him, 700 wins as a Division I head coach is a bar only a select many have reached in the profession and his counterpart Saturday paid his own respects afterward.

“Seven hundred wins is a lot of wins. It’s such a testament to his longevity as a coach doing what he’s done with such excellence in all facets of this business for so long,” Kelsey said. “He’s a guy that’s been really good to me since I’ve come into the league. My first year as a first-time head coach he put his arm around me and kind of took me under his wing a little bit and gave me some good advice, things that I think about to this day.

“I’ve always enjoyed his company, he’s a really good person and 700 is a heck of an accomplishment.”

This story was originally published January 2, 2016 at 5:50 PM with the headline "Cliff Ellis earns 700th win as Coastal Carolina blasts Winthrop."