CCU Hoops: Small Step Back En Route to Giant Leap Forward
By Terry Massey
1991.
Coastal Carolina senior Joseph Harris was still in diapers in his native Alabama, freshman Danny Nieman hadn't even been born yet, Cliff Ellis was coaching at Clemson and former Chanticleers basketball coach Russ Bergman was sitting about 10 rows closer, on the bench at Kimbel Gymnasium.
That's how long it’s been since the CCU men's basketball program has achieved its current level of success. The Chants were in prime position to make school history and break 19-year-old records when it faced defending Big South Conference champion Radford in what is now known as Kimbel Arena.
/media/images/Coastal_Carolina_Basketball_0110_-_02.jpgThe Highlanders halted the Chants' school-record-tying 12-game winning streak Thursday night with a 62-52 victory, preventing Coastal from going 10-0 at home and 7-0 in the Big South for the first time since the 1990-91 season. It was the worst showing of the season for the Chants, who fell to 16-3 overall.
”We didn't play very well tonight,” Ellis said, “but the mark of a good team is how it responds to disappointing losses, and I believe this is a good team.”
With Bergman in the stands and a standing-room-only crowd surrounding the court, it seemed like old times again. Bergman oversaw the good old days, taking the team to two NCAA Tournaments and putting CCU on the college basketball map. But he also prompted the dark days of NCAA probation.
His departure under pressure in 1994 signaled a near-death experience for the program. Coastal has had only one winning season since then, but Ellis has produced a team that seems determined to start its own winning tradition in just his third season, breathing new life into a program on life support.
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”It feels great to be a part of turning things around at Coastal and start winning again,” said Harris, who became just the second player in Big South history to score more than 1,000 points and pull down more than 1,000 rebounds in his career. “The records are great, but it's all about the team.”
Unfortunately, Coastal played more like the teams that have bumbled around Kimbel Arena in the more recent past in its biggest game of the season. Despite the Chants' strong start to the season, the true test was going to come in a Radford team that earned the league's NCAA bid last season.
Instead of playing their best against the best, the Chants shot just 32 percent from the floor, including 2-of-16 from 3-point range, and made 13 turnovers in a sloppy offensive outing. The CCU defense kept it close but couldn't stop 6-foot-11 center Art Parakhouski from getting 20 points and 10 rebounds.
”Offensively I thought it was one of our worst performances of the season, but overall our defense played well enough to keep us in it,” said Ellis. “(Parakhouski) killed us inside. We tried everything we could think of to try to stop him but he was just too strong. We didn't have an answer for him.”
Mario Edwards led Coastal with 16 points, Chad Gray added 13 points and Harris just missed a double-double with 11 points and nine rebounds.
The Chants will have to bounce back quickly with High Point paying a visit on Saturday. The loss to Radford forged a three-way tie atop the conference standings between Coastal, Radford and High Point, so the winner of Saturday's matchup will take an edge in the head-to-head tiebreaker. The Big South regular-season champion earns the right to host the conference tournament, where the winner of the league's automatic NCAA bid will be crowned.
That's Coastal's ultimate goal – to reach the level of success of the last team to reach the NCAA Tournament in 1993. Or, better yet, to surpass it.
”We're working hard to be the team that wins the conference and gets us back to the Big Dance,” Harris said. “I want to leave here knowing that I was part of something special.”
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