Chants vying for third straight Big South title before exiting conference

Coach Cliff Ellis has helped craft the narrative this week that his Coastal Carolina men’s basketball team is the one everybody will be rooting against as it begins Big South tournament play Friday evening.

The Chanticleers are leaving the league for the Sun Belt Conference after this season and have the chance to go out on top with a third straight Big South tournament championship and NCAA tournament berth.

And to whatever extent the Chants are actually viewed as the villains this weekend, the players have at least embraced that role.

“Nobody likes us, whether it’s because we’re leaving, or it doesn’t really matter, but we know nobody likes us so we’ve got a point to prove in that aspect too,” junior guard Colton Ray-St Cyr said.

There’s no doubt the Big South was not pleased when Coastal Carolina announced in September that it would be leaving after this year, and the conference responded by pulling the basketball tournament out of Conway where it was contracted to be a fourth straight year as part of an agreement sponsor VisitMyrtleBeach.com.

After initially considering the idea of awarding the host site to the highest seed, the league opted to reopen the bidding and settled on Campbell’s Pope Convocation Center in Buies Creek, N.C.

All the same, though, the No. 3-seeded Chants (18-10) has as much chance as any team in the conference to claim the trophy once again, and they’ll start that process Friday night with a quarterfinals matchup against No. 6 Gardner-Webb.

“I know this, as we go into it, the only fans that will be pulling for Coastal in this tournament are going to be the people that come from Coastal. There’s 10 teams up there that do not want Coastal Carolina to win, I can tell you that,” Ellis said. “We’re going to go into a hostile environment. We’ve done that before, throughout the course of the year. ... That’s the challenge we have to meet.”

Well, not the only challenge.

Ellis said earlier this week that he isn’t expecting senior forward Badou Diagne (11.2 points, team-high 7.0 rebounds per game) to be available much if at all this weekend due to the foot injury that has already cost him two games.

That leaves the Chants’ depth very thin in the frontcourt with seniors Tristian Curtis, Marcus Freeman and freshman Kevin Holmes Jr. really the only options with any experience.

But injuries have been the story of the season – the Chants have had players miss a combined 35 games due to injury already – and this team has continued to find a way while winning 10 of its last 12 games.

“We’re going to go into Buies Creek and try to keep rolling with what this team amazingly has done,” Ellis said. “We’ve had a good run. We’ve won 10 out of our last 12 games and I don’t think anybody expected that to happen. This team has amazed me in many ways with what they’ve gone through. ... And I know they’re ready to play.”

The Chants split their regular-season meetings with Gardner-Webb (15-15) this season.

They lost 65-61 to the Runnin’ Bulldogs on the road on Dec. 31 and then won 78-71 in Conway last month.

If they are to advance, the Chants would then face either No. 2 Winthrop (21-8) or No. 10 Presbyterian (11-19) in the semifinals Saturday.

“It’s a different season. ... They call it March Madness, there’s a reason for it. Crazy things happen,” Ellis said. “We’ve been on the good end of it the last couple years, we’ve had some tough times before that. We had a couple of 28-win seasons and didn’t win the tournament. You never know. You have to be good, which we are. You’ve got to have a break come your way. I think there’s several teams that could win this, but we’re going into it focusing on playing 120 minutes as best we possibly can.”

Said junior point guard Shivaughn Wiggins: “The rest of the season doesn’t matter now. Everybody is 0-0. You’ve got to win the next 120 minutes to be the champion, and we’ve got to put that together and do it.”

After making its first NCAA tournament appearances way back in 1991 and 1993, Coastal Carolina had to wait until 2014 to return to the Big Dance.

The Chants have now been there in back-to-back years and a third straight trip would only further elevate the national profile of the program as one of the nation’s more successful mid-majors.

And yes, it would be quite a way to exit the Big South as the first team from the conference to win it three straight years since Winthrop ran off four straight titles from 2005-08.

“To go out with three in a row and leave the Big South, that would be the best thing we could possibly do,” Ray-St Cyr said. “We’re really serious about this one. We want it.”

NOTES: Coastal Carolina also won the Big South tournament as a No. 3 seed last year. ... The Chants are the only team with any active players who have won a Big South tournament title, and Ellis is the only active coach in the league to do so.

This story was originally published March 3, 2016 at 10:29 PM with the headline "Chants vying for third straight Big South title before exiting conference."