Chants bounce back in a big way with lopsided win over PC

Well, that’s one way to respond.

Coming off two deflating losses against opponents from the bottom of the Big South standings, the Coastal Carolina men’s basketball team had something to prove Thursday night – or that’s how the Chanticleers played, at least.

The Chants scored the first 25 points of the game and continued to dominate until the final buzzer sounded on an 87-58 win over Presbyterian before an announced crowd of 2,117 inside The HTC Center.

Afterward, even coach Cliff Ellis couldn’t really explain the dramatic game-to-game turnaround after taking those humbling defeats to Liberty and Longwood the previous two games.

“I don’t know. I don’t. Can we move all these points around from the Winthrop game and that game and spread them around?” he said. “We came out and we made shots. You go 2-for-17 a few days ago and today you’re on fire. I can’t explain it. If I had an answer to this, I’d bottle it.”

Junior guard Ron Trapps, who came in averaging 4.6 points per game, led the way with a career-high 21 points on 8-of-11 shooting, junior guard Elijah Wilson and sophomore guard Jaylen Shaw scored 15 points each, senior forward Badou Diagne finished with 14 points and four blocks and senior forward Marcus Freeman chipped in 10 points and nine rebounds.

Just as impressively, the Chants (9-8, 3-4 Big South) held Presbyterian forward DeSean Murray – who came in as the Big South’s leading scorer at 21.4 points per game – to 10 points on 4-of-11 shooting.

“We needed that,” Wilson said. “We had a lot of built up fire from the past couple games that we dropped so we just used that as motivation coming into this game, and luckily it played into our hands and we were able to get that start like we did.”

Added Trapps: “Coach just emphasized one possession at a time – not one half, not one game at a time. Just one possession at a time. Just bring energy and just remember who we were, and that’s what we did.”

After Diagne scored the first four points of the game, Shaw followed with back-to-back 3-pointers from the left side for a 10-0 lead while forcing Presbyterian (7-10, 2-4) to call a quick timeout.

The Chants then pressured the Blue Hose into a bad pass on the ensuing inbounds as Trapps grabbed the steal and followed with a 3 at the other end. Two possessions later came a fastbreak layup and free throw from Freeman, soon followed by another 3 from Trapps, a Shaw layup, a Freeman layup and eventually a steal and fastbreak dunk from Wilson to make it 25-0 with 10:32 left in the first half.

The Chants would go into halftime up 50-24 and then launch another spurt while opening the second half on a 10-0 run that featured eight straight points from Wilson as the hosts would eventually peak their lead at 42 points.

The team’s leading scorer this season, Wilson was coming off a forgettable 1-of-11 shooting performance against Longwood before knocking down 5-of-12 shots Thursday night.

“I try not to let games like that affect me because everybody goes through those type of games,” he said. “After those type of games I just go back in the gym and correct some things, and luckily what I did in the gym the past couple of days helped me in this game.”

As for Trapps, he connected on 5-of-7 3-point attempts as part of his career-best scoring output and also finished with seven rebounds, four assists and three steals. It was an encouraging performance from a player who has spent the last couple of years working his way back from a devastating knee injury and trying to find a role within the team.

“That felt great,” he said. “I’ve been waiting on it for a long time.”

The question now is what to make of this showing for Coastal Carolina?

In their last four games, they’ve been terrific twice – including a 19-point win over Big South contender Winthrop – while in between losing 62-61 to Liberty and 76-61 at Longwood.

They’ll need more of what they showed Thursday night as they travel to Big South favorite High Point on Saturday.

“You can’t look back. You just have to be thankful for where we’re at, and we have to put this one immediately behind us because we’ve got High Point in less than 48 hours,” Ellis said. “But very proud of our team defensively and offensively. We shut Murray down and that was a big key, and we made shots and it just went from there.”

The Chants still have a steep hill to climb to get back into the regular-season conference race, but ultimately the season will come down to what happens in the Big South tournament and at the very least Thursday night was a reminder of what this team is capable of when everything clicks.

“It gave us a lot of confidence because we’ve been down the past couple of games from those tough losses,” Wilson said. “And to have a game like this it really gives us confidence for the next game and hopefully it can carry on through the rest of the season to try to get [a] conference championship.”

This story was originally published January 14, 2016 at 9:43 PM with the headline "Chants bounce back in a big way with lopsided win over PC."