Chants hold off late rally to topple High Point on the road

Although the Coastal Carolina men’s basketball team never trailed Saturday night on the way to one of its biggest wins of the season, it wasn’t until the final buzzer sounded that the Chanticleers could finally exhale.

After leading by as many as 12 points in the second half, the Chants had to weather a spirited rally from host High Point and two potential game-tying shots from Panthers sharpshooter Lorenzo Cugini – the national leader in 3-point shooting percentage – before sealing a 71-68 win before a packed crowd of 1,750 inside the Millis Center.

With that dramatic finish, the Chants punctuated a strong statement to the rest of the Big South that despite a recent lull and some early setbacks, they nonetheless remain one of the toughest obstacles in the conference race.

“I think it’s huge,” Coastal Carolina coach Cliff Ellis said afterward. “High Point doesn’t lose, I don’t think they’d lost a home game and they didn’t lose many last year. To come in here [and win] two years in a row speaks volumes for our team, but this is not last year’s team so I probably shouldn’t even interject that.”

Coming off back-to-back Big South tournament championships and NCAA tournament appearances, the Chants (10-8, 4-4) indeed have had their share of struggles replicating last season, be it trying to replace the senior leaders from that team or working around a number of injury setbacks that have befallen this squad since the start of the preseason.

But they’ve now answered a humbling two-game losing streak with two of their best games of the season in a rout of Presbyterian on Thursday night and this thorough 40-minute performance against the preseason league favorite Panthers (12-6, 5-2).

“Every win we get is a big win. It’s conference play. We’re a little behind in conference, so every win is a big one – especially on the road,” junior point guard Shivaughn Wiggins said. “We had to come and steal it, and we got it done.”

Junior guard Elijah Wilson drained a 3-pointer on the opening possession and stayed hot the entire game, finishing with 21 points and nine rebounds on 7-of-10 shooting (including 4-of-5 from beyond the arc), and sophomore guard Jaylen Shaw finished with 14 points and seven assists.

Altogether, the Chants connected on 6-of-9 3-pointers in the first half while going up by as many as 15 points early against the Panthers, and they still led by as many as 12 midway through the second half before High Point launched its rally.

With a little less than three minutes remaining, Panthers star forward John Brown scooped in a pretty reverse layup to cut the Coastal Carolina lead to 62-60.

The teams then traded baskets for the next couple minutes before senior forward Badou Diagne drained a wide-open 3 from the right wing to give the Chants a 69-63 lead with 38.6 seconds left. When High Point then missed a layup at the other end it looked like the visitors may be on the way to a victory march, but it wasn’t quite that simple.

Shaw missed the front end of a one-and-one at the foul line and High Point’s Anthony Lindauer – who had been scoreless to that point – dropped in a 3-pointer with 14.9 seconds on the clock to make it a 69-66 game.

“We knew it would be tough,” Wiggins said. “They were on their home court, we knew they would make shots when it was time to make shots. We just had to dig down and get it.”

High Point’s pressure then forced a turnover on the ensuing inbounds pass, and Adam Weary worked his way to the line for two free throws to draw the Panthers within a point at 69-68.

On the next inbounds, the Panthers and their fans thought they had forced another turnover as Wiggins tumbled to the floor, but a foul was called and the Chants’ steady point guard instead went to the foul line and converted two key free throws with 12.4 seconds to go to make it a three-point game again.

“They were huge. I finally wasn’t thinking. I missed a couple earlier and I had to put that behind me and I had to do it,” Wiggins said.

Said High Point coach Scott Cherry of the foul call that sent Wiggins to the line: “From my vantage point, I’m going to go back and look at the film, I thought we got another turnover because the kid tripped and fell and rolled with the ball. It’s unfortunate that we got a call against us. I’ll look at it closely and I’ll make sure it gets to the league office if it wasn’t correct.”

That left the Panthers one final possession to try to knot the score. Cugini, who came into the game shooting a Division I-best 59.7 percent from 3-point range, missed a contested 3 from the right wing, but the ball went out of bounds off Coastal Carolina with 2.4 seconds left. With one more try, the hosts again got the ball to Cugini – on the left wing this time – and with senior forward Tristian Curtis contesting the shot the ball clanked off the back of the rim to end the threat.

“It looked pretty good as it was going down. He’s very scary,” Ellis said. “... It would have been one heck of a shot because it was contested. If he makes it, he just makes a tough shot.”

Said Cherry: “We got a guy that’s leading the country in 3-point field goal percentage with a decent look at the rim. I liked the one he took before that too. I thought he made the first one when we ran it from the full-court set.”

Instead, the Chants now have some momentum while building on their 87-58 win over Presbyterian from Thursday night.

Wilson collected his fourth 20-point game of the season with his strong performance and tied a career-high with his nine rebounds.

“To have games like that you’ve got to try to get easy looks and easy baskets, get your confidence built up and that’s what I tried to do,” he said. “I give credit to my teammates, they helped me set up plays to get me easy looks and luckily I just kept feeling it for the rest of the game.”

Ellis also made a point to credit senior forward Marcus Freeman, who supplied nine points and six rebounds off the bench while continuing to be a solid producer in the paint.

Weary led High Point with 19 points while Brown finished with 18, but Ellis was especially pleased with the defensive effort on Cugini (1-of-7 from 3-point range for seven total points) and Lindauer (three points). It was the second-straight loss for the Panthers after winning their first five conference games and, as Ellis mentioned, their first home defeat.

The Chants, meanwhile, are still in the middle of the pack in the Big South standings, but they now boast wins over two of the league’s top contenders in Winthrop and High Point.

“Those guys are the defending champs,” Cherry said. “... They came out tonight and I think we made them a little bit too comfortable. I think we let them rise up and make some shots, but they were even making tough ones with hands in their face. ... They’ve got a very good basketball team. Winthrop’s very good, Coastal’s very good, don’t look at the records because the records mean absolutely zero.”

This story was originally published January 16, 2016 at 11:06 PM with the headline "Chants hold off late rally to topple High Point on the road."