Chanticleers draw UC Irvine, 7-6 center, in CIT semifinals

About 12 hours after pulling off another second-half surge and another nice win in the CollegeInsider.com Postseason Tournament, the Coastal Carolina men’s basketball team announced its next opponent as the 26-team field now whittles to just four.

The Chanticleers will host UC Irvine on Sunday night at 9 p.m. inside The HTC Center in a CIT semifinals game that will be broadcast live on the CBS Sports Network.

The other semifinal is still to be determined as UT Arlington and New Jersey Institute of Technology play in the final quarterfinal game Thursday night with the winner playing at Columbia on Sunday.

“We’re down to the final four so everybody is good,” Chants coach Cliff Ellis said Thursday morning after the matchup was set. “But Cal-Irvine, they’ve proven it. They are a team that’s got it all. They’ve got the 7-foot-6 center and power that goes behind him. The 7-foot-6 guy sometimes doesn’t play as much as the other guys, but he just gives them a dimension that you don’t see. They play hard-nosed defense and they come out of a tough league in the Big West, a league that is just so strong and solid.

“They’re going to get after you defensively. It’s going to be an interesting intersectional matchup, cross-country matchup which should make it fun.”

The 7-foot-6 center Ellis mentioned is UC Irvine sophomore Mamadou Ndiaye, who averages 12.2 points, 7.1 rebounds and 2.4 blocks per game. Ndiaye's status was up in the air after missing the Anteaters' quarterfinal game with a leg injury, but coach Russell Turner said Wednesday that the big man would play against Coastal.

The Anteaters (27-9) are led by junior guard Luke Nelson, who averages 13.7 points while shooting 35.8 percent from 3-point range (77-of-215).

Their notable wins this season included victories over Boston College and New Mexico State and they have advanced in the CIT with wins over North Dakota (89-86 in overtime) and Louisiana-Lafayette (67-66). Both games were on the road, though the Anteaters had a bye after the opening round.

They got by Louisiana-Lafayette in that quarterfinal game Wednesday night when 6-foot-10 senior forward Mike Best scored the go-ahead basket with 3.6 seconds left.

“We’ll be digging into it today. We’re gathering film now and we’ll be digging into that,” Ellis said of preparing for the Anteaters. “We’ve got until Sunday and of course they do too. Film prep begins. It’s a cram session.”

The Chants (21-11), meanwhile, have advanced with wins over Mercer (65-57), New Hampshire (71-62) and then Grand Canyon (60-58) in the quarterfinals Wednesday night. Coastal Carolina, which has been home for every round of the tournament while paying the $38,500 per round hosting fee, was down six points late in that quarterfinal before junior guard Elijah Wilson scored the game’s final eight points to push the Chants to victory.

The three wins during this CIT run represent the first official postseason victories in program history and have now put the Chants just two games away from possibly winning the whole thing.

“For us, we’ve got to continue to play as a team, focus on cutting turnovers down and get the rebounds and just everybody contribute,” Ellis said. “And I think the [added benefit] is national exposure. It’s a 9 p.m. game, CBS Sports Network will be carrying the game. This is a time for all the Coastal Carolina alumni and fans and the people in the Grand Strand to unite because the brand will be shown all over the country.”

Fan support has grown during the tournament run as the Chants’ attendance figures were relatively steady at 940 fans against Mercer and 847 for the New Hampshire game before jumping to 1,302 Wednesday night for the quarterfinal against Grand Canyon.

Ellis continues to reiterate his hope that the fan base will rally around this event, especially now that the Chants are into the semifinals.

“I thought there was energy and electricity in the crowd. You could feel it. We could feel the crowd, and I think right now as we go into it and we’re trying to win a postseason championship the crowd is a huge factor,” he said. “But your brand is on national television and this involves recruiting, this involves impressions, everything that centers around Coastal. It’s huge for this university.”

This story was originally published March 24, 2016 at 1:45 PM with the headline "Chanticleers draw UC Irvine, 7-6 center, in CIT semifinals."