Chanticleers travel to Winthrop for pivotal Big South showdown

With three games left on the schedule, the Coastal Carolina men’s basketball team is well positioned to make a run at the Big South’s regular-season championship.

The Chanticleers are as healthy as they’ve been all season, are playing their best basketball with eight wins in their last nine games and sit just a half game behind co-leaders UNC Asheville and Winthrop – teams they already have wins over.

But of course, none of that really matters unless they can do it again.

The Chants visit the Eagles on Thursday night at the Winthrop Coliseum in Rock Hill. Coastal Carolina will look to complete a season sweep of its longtime rival and keep pace in the Big South race before closing the regular season at UNC Asheville next week.

“It’s down to three games and the road where the championship is going to go through. It’s going to be a tremendous atmosphere, a lot of marbles are on the table so to speak,” Chants coach Cliff Ellis said. “It’s a three-game situation for us, and we’ve got to do it on the road. I think our guys are ready. It’s going to be a tough ball game, but I have all the confidence that this team is going to go in and give it the best shot that they’ve got.”

The Chants (16-9, 10-5 Big South) would love to match their performance from the earlier meeting with Winthrop (18-7, 10-4), when they rolled to an 82-63 win in Conway back on Jan. 2.

Ellis isn’t expecting it to go quite like that, though.

That stands as the Eagles’ most lopsided defeat of the season and came in the midst of a three-game losing streak as part of a lull they have since bounced back from in a big way with wins in nine of their last 10 games.

For that matter, Coastal Carolina and Winthrop have been the two hottest teams in the league leading up to this pivotal showdown Thursday night, and Ellis says that early January win holds no bearing as the teams prepare to clash again.

“I don’t think it has a factor in this game. Some games get away from you at times and that one did, but we know what Winthrop’s made of,” he said. “They’re not going to go 3-for-whatever it was from the field at the 3-point line. This team is one of the nation’s leading scorers. They average 80-something points a game, they’re at home – totally different situation.”

Winthrop indeed leads the Big South in scoring at 83.3 points per game while also giving up the most points in the league at 77.0 per contest. Coastal Carolina, in contrast, is the conference’s top defensive team, holding opponents to 66.6 points per game and faces quite a challenge in this rematch.

The Eagles boast three of the league’s top nine scorers as junior guard Keon Johnson is averaging a Big South-best 20.0 points per game, senior guard Jimmy Gavin is fifth at 17.4 points per game and sophomore forward Xavier Cooks is ninth at 14.2 per contest.

Johnson and Gavin also rank second and third in 3-point shooting at 42.3 percent and 41.8 percent, respectively, while each averaging 2.6 made 3s per game.

“Winthrop’s great. They’re on their home floor – I think they’ve only lost one game there,” junior point guard Shivaughn Wiggins said. “They’ve got two of the top scorers in the conference so we need to stop them and get the win on the road.”

It just so happens that this game arrives a few days after Wiggins and Johnson were named the Big South’s co-Players of the Week.

Wiggins averaged 24 points, 4 assists and 2.5 rebounds last week in wins over High Point and Gardner-Webb, including a career-high 30-point performance Saturday against the Runnin’ Bulldogs. Johnson, meanwhile, averaged 21 points, 3 assists, 2.5 rebounds and 2 steals in wins over Longwood and Radford, including a 32-point performance against the Highlanders.

“They’re going to go at each other Thursday night so that will be an intriguing matchup,” Ellis said.

The Chants’ strength, though, is in its depth, which has been building over the second half of the season as junior guard Colton Ray-St Cyr and senior forward Marcus Freeman have recovered from injuries to fill out Ellis’ rotation.

Ellis had bemoaned much of the season that he just wanted to have his whole team together and see what it could do. The Chants won’t have senior forward Michel Enanga (knee surgery) in back, but they are as healthy as can otherwise be expected and the results have followed.

“Our whole focus is let’s get our team and have them be able to go into the tournament ready,” Ellis said. “We’ve had this week to get Marcus fine-tuned with regards to him having to sit out for two and a half weeks. He didn’t have time last week, we just put him in games and let him go. ... We’re healthier by the day, there’s no doubt about that.”

But some of their biggest hurdles still remain, with perhaps none looming larger than Thursday night at Winthrop.

This story was originally published February 17, 2016 at 7:17 PM with the headline "Chanticleers travel to Winthrop for pivotal Big South showdown."