Gardner-Webb rallies back to eliminate CCU from Big South tournament
The Coastal Carolina men’s basketball team had plenty of momentum coming into the Big South tournament with wins in 10 of its final 12 games, and the Chanticleers seemed to generate even more in building a 13-point halftime lead in the conference quarterfinals Friday night.
But everything changed in the second half.
Gardner-Webb rallied back to take the lead for good with a little less than five minutes remaining and held on from there for a 69-65 win inside Campbell’s Pope Convocation Center to end the Chants’ quest for a third straight conference championship and NCAA tournament return.
“It’s definitely not the way we wanted to go out,” junior point guard Shivaughn Wiggins said. “It’s real tough on us. This team has been through a lot. I’ve never been on a team that’s been through as much as this team. We were strong and we responded good up until this point. We’re just going to take some time off and get ready and see what we have next.”
Coach Cliff Ellis said he hoped the Chants (18-11) would still merit an invite to a secondary or tertiary postseason tournament, but that is out of their hands now.
Standout forward Tyrell Nelson led the No. 6-seeded Runnin’ Bulldogs (17-15) with a game-high 21 points Friday night – with 15 of those coming after halftime – and had nine rebounds. Harold McBride scored 15, Adonis Burbage added 14 and former North Myrtle Beach High School star Dylan Poston had eight points and a game-high 11 rebounds as Gardner-Webb earned a 46-38 advantage on the boards.
Wiggins led Coastal Carolina with 17 points and Elijah Wilson added 15, with all of his coming before halftime.
Not only did the loss end the Chants’ NCAA tournament hopes, but this also marks the program’s final Big South game before moving on to the Sun Belt Conference next season.
Gardner-Webb, meanwhile, moves on to play No. 2 Winthrop in the semifinals Saturday.
“Coastal [is] a very great team. They’ve been the best team for the past couple years so to beat them this year was a big accomplishment, but we know we’ve still got more to go,” Burbage said.
The Chants had built a 38-25 halftime lead as Gardner-Webb got off to a woeful start offensively, hitting just 2-of-18 3-point attempts in the first half.
Wilson, the 2015 Big South tournament MVP, started hot while knocking down two quick 3-pointers to start the game on the way to leading all players with those 15 first-half points. He said the Runnin’ Bulldogs didn’t do anything different against him after halftime – the shots just weren’t falling as he went 0-for-5 the rest of the way.
“I still feel like they guarded me the same. I guess I got a little cold in the second half and wasn’t able to score like I did the first half,” he said simply.
The same could be said for the Chants as a whole.
They connected on just 30.3 percent of their shots from the field after halftime and were 5-of-19 from 3-point range over the second half.
They were also without senior forward Badou Diagne, who tested his injured foot during warmups but determined he was not able to play. And the Chants’ depth was further tested as junior guard Jaylen Shaw and senior forward Marcus Freeman were limited to a combined 32 minutes of playing time due to foul trouble.
“We came out smoking. We were hot, we were doing some great things. It was two different halves and you’ve got to give them credit for staying the course,” Ellis said. “... They just willed their way through with the boards. Their rebounding just astonished us, and that was really the difference in the game.”
Wiggins hit two 3s early in the second half while trading big shots with Gardner-Webb and keeping the Chants’ lead comfortable for the time being at 44-33, but the Runnin’ Bulldogs would score the next eight points to draw to within three.
The Chants were later protecting a 52-48 lead after freshman Kevin Holmes Jr. hit a much-needed 3 from the right side, but again Gardner-Webb got hot on the offensive end. At one point the Runnin’ Bulldogs scored 11 points in the span of four possessions as L’Hassane Niangane turned an offensive rebound into a layup and free throw, Nelson sank a jumper, Burbage drained a second-chance 3 and Nelson followed with a layup and free throw for a 61-57 lead with 4:10 remaining.
Gardner-Webb peaked its lead at 64-57 on a Nelson jumper with just less than two minutes remaining, and the Chants simply couldn’t recover.
Junior guard Colton Ray-St Cyr connected on a circus shot and hit the ensuing free throw and Wiggins later dropped in a 3 to make it 66-63 in the final minute, but the Chants wouldn’t score again.
“Just a great effort by our guys in the second half,” Gardner-Webb coach Tim Craft said. “We struggled offensively in the first half and they had a lot to do with that. We just couldn’t throw it in. I was just proud of our guys in the second half. We really did it with our defense.”
The Runnin’ Bulldogs were playing on back-to-back nights after beating host Campbell in the first round of the tournament Thursday, and even when they trailed by 13 at halftime, Nelson said the players were unfazed.
“We were still confident at halftime,” he said. “Even though we were down, we knew that our shots just weren’t falling. We knew if we stuck together and if we kept making one more pass and if we rebounded better we knew we had a shot of winning this game. And that’s what we did.”
The Chants’ hopes for a third straight NCAA tournament are over, but again, Ellis is hopeful that this season might not be done just yet. He expressed his optimism that Coastal Carolina would get an opportunity in either the NIT, CIT or CBI postseason tournaments, with the latter two being the more likely of those potential options.
“I think that we should. I mean one-third of the teams [nationally] will get some sort of invite. I think we put ourselves in position to,” Ellis said. “When you’re in this situation, you now leave it to committees. I feel good about it. We won’t know until Sunday [next week] with regards to it, I don’t have the total answer to that, but I feel confident that we should. I feel confident in saying we should get one; whether we will get one or not depends on other things. Now it’s in the hands of the NIT, the CIT and the CBI for us.
“Postseason play is a tremendous opportunity regardless of what. Everybody wants what we’ve had the last couple of years, the NCAA tournament ... but I can tell you that when you are a mid-major going to a postseason tournament is something that every player wants to do because you want to compete for a championship. ... And I would certainly like to have the opportunity to maybe get Badou healthy and maybe send the seniors out in a different way and then be able to build [for] the future with our team.”
Ellis also remarked on the end of an era as the Chants wrap up their time in the Big South.
Friday wasn’t the ending he or the players had envisioned in that regard, but he took a broader view in reflecting on the Chants’ mark on the league.
“I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the Big South. I’ve had good relationships, good friends, the competition has been good. And I will say this with regards to our team, I know that when I came into the league it was all about Winthrop. It was all about Winthrop. There was nothing ever said about Coastal, but I can say that as we leave the league, there’s no question that Coastal has been a major factor with regards to being a strong presence in this league,” Ellis said. “So I’m proud of what we were able to build and do. ... I will say this, I think up until now and as we close it, I think we left our mark.”
Ryan Young: 843-626-0318, @RyanYoungTSN
This story was originally published March 4, 2016 at 10:24 PM with the headline "Gardner-Webb rallies back to eliminate CCU from Big South tournament."