Chanticleers don’t expect Diagne back for Big South tournament

In discussing his team’s latest injury setback, Coastal Carolina men’s basketball coach Cliff Ellis said he’s never seen anything like this in a career that has spanned more than four decades.

Ellis delivered the bad news Tuesday that he expects senior forward Badou Diagne to be unavailable for the Big South tournament this week due to the strained ligament in his foot that has kept him out the last two games.

The Chanticleers (18-10) have already had players miss a combined 35 games due to injury this season, and now they’ll likely be without one of their top contributors when they meet either Gardner-Webb or Campbell in the Big South quarterfinals Friday night in Buies Creek, N.C.

“Question mark at best. Yesterday he was not able to put any pressure on it. We’ll see how it is today, but if we get him back it’s a blessing – whatever we get back,” Ellis said. “We’re going into this tournament as if he’s not going to be able to play, and if we get some minutes out of him, good. It’s unfortunate, but it’s the circumstances we’ve been dealt all year. We’ve had to deal with it and we’ve dealt with it.”

The Chants got off to an inauspicious back in the preseason when four players – junior point guard Shivaughn Wiggins, sophomore guard Jaylen Shaw, junior guard Ron Trapps and senior forward Marcus Freeman – were involved in a car accident near campus, resulting in concussions that disrupted the team’s early practices.

Wiggins then missed a couple games due to a hamstring injury early in the season.

The Chants lost senior forward Michel Enanga in December to a season-ending knee injury.

Junior guard Colton Ray-St Cyr broke his wrist around that same time and missed eight games.

Freeman missed four games with a foot injury sustained in late January.

And now Diagne, who sustained his injury in practice last week.

“It’s hard. The whole season’s been hard. I’ve never been through anything like this in my entire coaching career, never,” Ellis said. “You look at the fact that there’s been eight out of 13 players [injured in some way]. Always a team is going to have one or two guys that you’ll miss here or there, but to have eight of your 13 miss significant time, that’s huge. It’s hard, but we’ve managed it and I think we will manage this.”

Diagne leads the Chants in rebounding at 7.0 per game and is averaging a career-best 11.2 points per game. His absence is a significant blow to an already thin frontcourt that will have to depend on senior Tristian Curtis (6.4 points, 6.8 rebounds per game), Freeman (5.9/5.6) and freshman Kevin Holmes Jr. (2.4/2.2) to split those minutes.

The alternative for Ellis is to employ smaller lineups for stretches to get those guys at least some rest.

“Next man up. Yeah, it’s tough for us, Badou’s a major contributor to our team, but it’s just the next man up,” Curtis said. “We’ve been handling adversity all year.”

Despite the setbacks, Coastal Carolina has won 10 of its last 12 games and earned the No. 3 seed in the Big South tournament while finishing just one game out of first place.

Ellis has said on multiple occasions that he believes the Chants would have won the regular-season conference championship had they been healthier, but the biggest prize remains as they look for their third-straight Big South tournament title and third-straight NCAA tournament berth.

The Chants have a bye into the quarterfinals Friday and will await the outcome of the first-round matchup Thursday between No. 6 Gardner-Webb (15-15) and No. 11 Campbell (12-17) – the tournament host.

Coastal Carolina went 1-1 this season against both of those teams.

“This team has amazed me in many ways with what they’ve gone through,” Ellis said. “To have 35 games [missed due to injury], we’ve only played 28. So we’ve never had our full team the entire year, so for them to continue to battle and be where they are is very impressive. And I know they’re ready to play. We don’t know who we’ll play, but whoever we play is going to be a tough contest.”

This story was originally published March 1, 2016 at 7:14 PM with the headline "Chanticleers don’t expect Diagne back for Big South tournament."