Winthrop widens Big South lead over Chanticleers with impressive win

Cliff Ellis didn’t expect his Coastal Carolina basketball team to necessarily repeat the 19-point pasting it put on Winthrop when the teams met last month in Conway, but he also couldn’t have expected the rematch to go almost the complete opposite way.

With wins in eight of their previous nine games, the Chanticleers had fought their way back into the race for the Big South’s regular season championship, but with a 79-67 loss to the Eagles at Winthrop Coliseum on Thursday night they have likely slid back out of contention.

Coastal Carolina actually held a narrow lead in the opening moments of the second half before Winthrop – equally hot with wins in 10 of its last 11 games now – seized all the momentum and a significant leg-up on the Chants in the standings.

The Chants (16-10, 10-6 Big South) entered the day a half-game behind conference co-leaders UNC Asheville and Winthrop and now find themselves two losses back of both teams with just two games left on their schedule.

“[We’ve] got to stay right there, focus on the next one at hand. You’ve got to dig a little deeper, we’ve got to rebound better, we’ve got to focus on our fundamentals,” Ellis said. “You can’t do anything about this; we’ve got to look to the next one.”

Winthrop sophomore forward Xavier Cooks was the difference this time, piling up 26 points – while shooting 6-of-8 from 3-point range – along with 10 rebounds and four blocks. The Eagles (19-7, 11-4) also got 16 points and six assists from junior point guard Keon Johnson and collectively shot a perfect 20-of-20 from the free throw line in the win.

Junior guard Colton Ray-St Cyr scored a career-high 20 points off the bench for Coastal Carolina and sophomore guard Jaylen Shaw added 19. The Chants had a couple key players in foul trouble throughout the second half and connected on just 4-of-23 3-pointers (17.4 percent), but Ellis reiterated that the loss came down to one overriding factor.

“We can sit here and talk about a lot of things, but I think Xavier Cooks is the difference. That’s my opinion,” Ellis said.

Coastal Carolina had won the teams’ first meeting, 82-63, back on Jan. 2 at The HTC Center as Winthrop was in the middle of a three-game losing streak at the time before righting its season.

Neither team looked particularly sharp in the first half Thursday, as the Chants shot 38.5 percent from the field and the Eagles just 33.3 percent despite building a 32-31 halftime lead.

A backdoor cut from junior guard Elijah Wilson gave Coastal Carolina a 35-34 lead in the opening minute of the second half, but Winthrop would counter with a 12-2 run.

Later, when the Chants trimmed their deficit to 57-53 as Shaw kept them in the game with an inspired second-half performance, the hosts answered again with the next 13 points.

And at that point, it was mostly a victory march.

“We tried our hardest, but Cooks made shots down the stretch that really hurt us. And every time we seemed to get a little run going, they seemed to answer back,” Ray-St Cyr said.

Said Shaw: “I mean, we can’t win them all, but I’m glad to know we put up a fight. We just had some mistakes and they took advantage of them.”

Cooks, who hadn’t made more than three 3s in any game this season, was 4-of-5 from 3-point range in the second half alone and the Eagles were 7-of-14 on 3s as a team after halftime.

Meanwhile, it was a tough night for a few Chants as Wilson, the team’s leading scorer this season, shot just 4-of-13 from the field for nine points, junior point guard Shivaughn Wiggins went 1-of-10 from the field for nine points while fouling out late, senior forward Badou Diagne finished with two points and 10 rebounds while also playing much of the second half with four fouls and senior forward Tristian Curtis was also quiet with no points and five rebounds.

Coastal Carolina has now lost its last four games inside Winthrop Coliseum, but the Chants have had the edge over the Eagles in the bigger moments, knocking them off in the Big South championship game each of the last two years. So the significance of pushing their rivals to the fringe of the regular-season race was not lost on the Winthrop players.

Especially in what could be the last regular-season meeting between these teams for a while with the Chants moving to the Sun Belt Conference next year, and no plans announced yet for the teams to play as non-conference foes.

“I didn’t have to go through what they went through last year in the Big South tournament, but as a freshman as soon as you get here all you hear about is Coastal and the rivalry and stuff like that,” Winthrop rookie Adam Pickett said. “So for me, it was a big game. I know my emotions were running high.”

Said Cooks: “I try not to get too emotionally attached to games. ... But obviously I can’t forget about last year, the [Big South] final. That’s always going to be in my mind, and losing to Coastal at Coastal earlier this year by 20, that was embarrassing. We really stepped up [this] last time playing Coastal and it was good we got the win.”

Coastal Carolina has two games to regroup and prepare to make another run in the conference tournament, which will be held at Campbell in Buies Creek, N.C., this year.

That said, the players weren’t ready to concede the regular-season title just yet with both Winthrop and UNC Asheville each still with three games left – including a showdown with each other Saturday in Winthrop.

“Of course, it’s a real disappointment because it’s what separated us from being first, to knock another team out of the race,” Ray-St Cyr said. “But you know, they have a tough schedule coming up and we still have two games left, so there’s a lot we can do to still get that first place. It’s just out of our control now.”

This story was originally published February 18, 2016 at 10:25 PM with the headline "Winthrop widens Big South lead over Chanticleers with impressive win."