CCU Men’s Basketball Back Home to Host Sun Belt Leaders

CONWAY (CCU) – This present three-week stretch of basketball action has been anything but easy for the Coastal Carolina men’s basketball team.  The Chants are trying to work their way up from the middle of the pack towards the top of the Sun Belt Conference and having to face all five teams that are ahead of them in the rankings to make that move.

The run started off with a home-split, losing to Texas State by two, then defeating Texas Arlington.  The Chants then went on the road where they once again split, defeating Little Rock and losing at Arkansas State

This weekend Georgia Southern and Georgia State travel to Conway and entering Saturday’s conference action both of those teams are tied with Arkansas State at the top of the conference standings at 9-2.  The Chants are only three games back entering Saturday’s showdown with Georgia Southern at 6-5.

The Chants (11-13, 6-5 Sun Belt) made a line-up change on the road in Arkansas last week, inserting Shivaughn Wiggins into the starting lineup and letting Demario Beck and Joseph Williams-Powell work more in the paint area.

The move worked well in some areas as was evidenced by the win at Little Rock, the move also worked well at Arkansas State, but the open shots that fell just two nights earlier in Little Rock, would not go down in a loss in Jonesboro.

Jaylen Shaw has taken over as the team’s scoring leader averaging 14 points per game.  Now that he is not playing at the point position so much, he can concentrate on his scoring which he is doing quite well.

Elijah Wilson has been a marked man by the opponents all season and that really showed in the past two road games.  He was in foul trouble for most of the game at Arkansas State and in the two games only scored six points.  He continues to average 13.1 points per game and is only 11 points away from becoming the third player in CCU history to reach 1,700 career points.

Beck and Wiggins are playing well.  Beck averaged eight points and six rebounds during the Arkansas trip and is averaging 9.4 points and eight rebounds per outing.  Wiggins has helped the Chants cut down on turnovers now that he has moved into the point guard position and is also averaging over nine points per game.

The person that played the best on the road trip is Colton Ray-St Cyr.  The senior averaged 16.5 points and six rebounds during the two games.  He hit 13 of his 19 field goals (.684) and was three-of-six (.500) on his three point field goals.  For the season he averages 9.3 points and 5.8 rebounds per game.

Freshman Artur Labinowicz had back-to-back double digit scoring efforts on the road trip.  He had a career-high 14 points in Little Rock and followed that with a 10-point effort at Arkansas State.  Like Ray-St Cyr, he shot the ball extremely well, knocking down seven of his 14 field goals (.500) and four of his seven three-point attempts (.571).  Labinowicz leads the team in three-point percentage shooting over 42 percent from beyond the three-point line.

When CCU was in Statesboro to face Georgia Southern back on Jan. 23, the Eagles pulled out a high-scoring 91-80 win over the Chanticleers.  It was a game which saw the Chants stay close in the game even though the Eagles shot almost 53 percent from the field for the game compared to CCU’s 45 percent.

The difference came at the free throw line where the home-standing Eagles shot 27 free throws hitting 20, while CCU shot six, making five.

GS (16-8, 9-2 Sun Belt) brings an explosive team into Conway Saturday led by the conference’s top leading scorers.  The Eagles’ Ike Smith leads the Sun Belt averaging 19.4 points per game and teammate Tookie Brown is right behind him and second in the conference averaging 18 points per game.

Mike Hughes is the third member of the team averaging double-digits at 11.6 points per game.  Smith and Montae Glenn are the team’s leaders on the boards averaging 5.2 rebounds per game while Brown’s 95 total assist’s is a team-best along with his 39 steals.

Saturday’s game is scheduled to tip off at 4:30 p.m.

Just two nights later, the Chants will host Georgia State, a team that defeated CCU 76-56 in Atlanta on Jan. 23rd.  Monday’s game against the Panthers is set to tip off at 7 p.m.