Coastal Carolina’s Ellis not pleased with team’s representation in All-Big South honors

Coastal Carolina men’s basketball coach Cliff Ellis had some strong opinions while reacting to the Big South’s all-conference honors Tuesday.

After going 18-10 in the regular season and finishing a game out of first place in the conference standings, the Chanticleers did not place any players on the All-Big South first or second team.

Junior point guard Shivaughn Wiggins and junior guard Elijah Wilson were selected as honorable-mentions.

“Well it sure looks like we’re a terrible team with the way the thing comes out. ... How did we win 18 games if that’s the only mention we get?” Ellis said. “I only have one vote. I had my votes. I voted for those guys and one more. So be it. We’ll just have to deal with [it]. We’ve got one more week in the Big South and then we move on. That’s kind of been the way the year’s been.”

Coastal Carolina, which is the No. 3 seed for the Big South tournament this week in Buies Creek, N.C., is leaving the conference after this season to join the Sun Belt Conference.

Since the university made that announcement in September, the Big South reacted by pulling the conference tournament out of Conway – where it was scheduled to be this year for the fourth straight season as part of a sponsorship deal with VisitMyrtleBeach.com – and moving it to Campbell’s home arena after reopening the bidding.

That decision and how it was reached rankled Coastal Carolina administrators. Whether the All-Big South voting was reflective of any angst toward the Chants for leaving the league is purely speculation, but Ellis has said this week that he feels nobody wants to see his team win another conference championship on their way out the door.

As for the Chants’ honorable-mention selections, Wiggins has become the leader of the team in his second season as point guard. He ranks second on the roster in scoring at 13.1 points per game while also averaging 3.7 assists and routinely defending the opposing team’s best player. He’s been at his best down the stretch, too, averaging 17.7 points over the last 10 games.

Wilson, meanwhile, leads the Chants in scoring at 13.6 points per game and 3-pointers with 65 on 39.5-percent shooting from beyond the arc.

“I’m very disappointed that we didn’t get more recognition with regards to that. I thought Shivaughn had had one heck of a year and deserved more than honorable mention, I really did,” Ellis said. “So anyway, it is what it is. There’s certainly a lot of teams that look to me would be first or second place with all [the postseason honors they got]. A lot of teams got some good players up there. You would think we were in last place.”

For his part, Wiggins said he was neither surprised nor concerned about the all-conference team voting.

“No, we’re not surprised. Our team is kind of made up different. We’re more like a diverse team, we’ve got a whole bunch of people who can score and rebound,” he said. “We feel like we’re deeper than a lot of teams so we really try to focus on winning and not worry about honors and stuff like that.”

The Chants did receive one notable postseason honor, though.

Senior forward Tristian Curtis was named the Big South’s Scholar-Athlete of the Year.

He boasts a 3.47 grade-point average as an exercise and sport science major and is now a two-time Big South All-Academic selection. He’s the first Chant to receive this honor, since Jack Leasure was named the Scholar-Athlete of the Year from 2006-08.

“It’s pretty exciting honestly,” Curtis said. “But first, to God be the glory. I’m a big religious person, I believe in God, that’s my foundation for everything, so if you do God’s work God will look out for you and I just feel God is looking out for me. I’m just grateful and blessed to be in this situation. I would have never imagined it so things like this are just far beyond my imagination.”

As for the other notable honors, High Point forward John Brown was voted the Big South’s Player of the Year for the second time as well as Defensive Player of the Year after averaging 19.6 points, 7.1 rebounds and 1.75 blocks per game while shooting 60.2 percent from the field and leading the league with 97 steals. He becomes the first player in league history to receive Player of the Year and Defensive Player of the Year honors in the same season and the second to be voted first-team all-conference all four years.

Campbell guard Chris Clemons, who ranked fourth in the conference in scoring at 18.8 points per game, was named Big South Freshman of the Year.

Liberty’s Ritchie McKay was honored as Big South Coach of the Year for leading the Flames to a fifth-place finish and a 10-8 conference record despite returning almost no proven contributors this season.

Meanwhile, the All-Big South First-Team consisted of Brown, Winthrop guard Keon Johnson, Presbyterian forward DeSean Murray, Winthrop guard Jimmy Gavin and Longwood center Lotanna Nwogbo.

The Second-Team featured Winthrop forward Xavier Cooks, Radford guard Rashun Davis, High Point guard Adam Weary, Gardner-Webb forward Tyrell Nelson and Campbell’s Clemons.

For what it’s worth, UNC Asheville – a balanced team like Coastal Carolina that was in the hunt for the regular-season championship most of the season – received only one honorable-mention selection.

This story was originally published March 1, 2016 at 7:52 PM with the headline "Coastal Carolina’s Ellis not pleased with team’s representation in All-Big South honors."