Wiggins leads Coastal Carolina to victory over Gardner-Webb

Coastal Carolina junior guard Shivaughn Wiggins had perhaps the best performance of his career Saturday.

And it came at an opportune time as the Chanticleers were looking to bounce back following a dramatic one-point loss to High Point just two days prior that snapped their seven-game winning streak.

Wiggins shot 11-for-13 from the field as he poured in a career-high 30 points to go along with five rebounds and four assists, and Coastal Carolina used a strong second-half surge to get past Gardner-Webb 78-71 at The HTC Center and improve to 10-5 in Big South conference play.

“I’m feeling pretty good,” said Wiggins, who also put up a team-high 18 points in Thursday’s loss to High Point. “My first one went in and usually, when that happens, I have a pretty good game and my teammates were finding me in good spots. So that helped out a lot, too.”

The win keeps the Chanticleers’ hopes of winning a Big South conference regular-season championship very much alive with only three games remaining. They sit a half game behind both UNC Asheville and Winthrop.

Coming into Saturday, just two games separated the top seven teams in the conference as the race gets tighter.

“It was a hard-fought game. There’s no question that we have two teams going at each other and we can see how great this [Big South] tournament is going to be in three weeks,” Coastal Carolina coach Cliff Ellis said. “Everybody just battles and it’s close games; you just try to dig it out. … We beat a good basketball team and I’m very proud to get this win. There’s three games left, and it’s a crazy race with seven teams in the dogfight going into today. We just have to take it one game at a time, but it’s good to get this win.”

Coastal fell behind by as much as nine points in the first half, but cut into the Bulldogs’ lead and trailed them by only three points at halftime.

Then, the Chanticleers came out hot after the break as they scored the first 11 points of the second half to take a 41-33 advantage and never looked back, letting the Bulldogs get within just four the rest of the way.

“Coach preaches [strong play] in the first five minutes of each half,” Wiggins said. “We executed our game plan, put it together and went on a nice run.”

Wiggins scored 15 points in each half Saturday, and his point total was the highest for a Coastal player since Anthony Raffa put up a career-high 34 points in a loss to Florida International in the 2012-13 season. Wiggins, whose previous career-high was 24 points (twice), also went 5-of-6 from behind the arc, and 3-of-3 from the free-throw line.

Ellis has been impressed with Wiggins’ vast improvement.

“That was absolutely the best game I’ve seen [Wiggins] play, offensively. He’s always there defensively and he did a great job,” Ellis said. “I just think he takes what’s there. He gets other people involved and if they’re not doing [well], he’s just going to go do it; We’ve seen this happen over and over. He’s just a tough a kid. He’s a tough kid.”

Also playing a big part in the Chanticleers’ success Saturday was Tristian Curtis. The senior forward grabbed a game-high 13 boards to go along with eight points and one block Saturday, following up a 15 rebound performance in Thursday’s loss to High Point.

“I can’t say enough about Tristian Curtis,” Ellis said. “He’s working and our entire team is working. It was nice [to see].”

Junior guard Elijah Wilson had 15 points, senior forward Badou Diagne had 11 points and six rebounds, and junior guard Colton Ray-St Cyr added nine boards to go along with six points.

Coastal made it a point to limit Gardner-Webb’s leading scorer Tyrell Nelson (14.2 ppg) and leading rebounder Harold McBride (7.8 rpg). The Chanticleers held the pair to just a combined 26 points on 7-of-24 shooting (29 percent) from the field, and limited McBride to just five boards.

Coastal also outrebounded the Bulldogs 44-36, and outscored them 30-18 inside the paint.

“Gardner-Webb has a good history of always having really good bigs,” Curtis said. “We knew Nelson was good since he was a freshman and the game plan was to just go in there and play strong, wall up and try not to swing down. They’re really good; hats off to them. We just executed and came out with the win.”

Said Wiggins: “We tried to keep [Nelson] off the glass and keep McBride out of the paint and we executed those two [game plans]. I think it turned out well for us.”

Meanwhile, Ellis and the Chanticleers know nothing will be easy from here on out as they head into the final stretch of a grueling schedule. Coastal goes on the road to battle Winthrop on Thursday, and hosts Charleston Southern in its final home game Feb. 25. Then, the Chanticleers play UNC Asheville on the road in the regular-season finale Feb. 27.

“We have a shot at this thing, but so do six other [teams]. So, every game that you win is a notch in the belt and if you drop one, you need to have some help. That’s how crazy the league is, when you have a league botched up like this, that tells you how good the teams are,” Ellis said. “It’s just a good league … there’s not anybody that can’t win it. Not anybody.”

Ellis said his team has done a good job of staying even-keeled this season, and he hopes that will pay off when it’s time for the Big South tournament in Buies Creek, N.C starts on March 3.

“They like each other and they’re disappointed if things don’t go well. But they don’t get too high after a win; they know what’s ahead of them,” Ellis said of his squad. “Three weeks from now, we’re in Buies Creek and anything can happen that weekend. Anything.”

This story was originally published February 13, 2016 at 7:22 PM with the headline "Wiggins leads Coastal Carolina to victory over Gardner-Webb."