The Coastal Carolina Chanticleers men's basketball team clobbered the Radford Highlanders 86-63 on Saturday night in Radford, Virginia. The victory extends CCU win streak to 18 which is the nation's second longest in division one behind #1 Ohio State.
Desmond Holloway led Coastal in scoring with 21 points. Ten different Chanticleers got into the scoring column. Anthony Raffa tallied 17 points and Kingstree product Chad Gray had 13. The Chanticleers shot 9 of 18 from three-point range and led by as many as 29 points in the blowout victory.
Coastal Carolina improves to a record of 20-2 overall and a perfect 11-0 in Big South Conference play. CCU returns home to play the Liberty Flames on Thursday night at 7 p.m. Liberty trails the Chants by just one game in the Big South standings.
Coastal won the first meeting on January 8 with a 70-67 victory at Liberty.
POST GAME ANALYSIS from Rich Chrampanis in Virginia
I've been covering the CCU basketball program for 11 seasons. It used to be that you could count road victories for the season on one hand. That's no longer the case. This team comes out night in and night out with quiet confidence and simply wears its opponent down. When Radford made a 10-0 run late in the first half to get within seven, Desmond Holloway delivered a dagger to head into the locker room with a 9 point edge and then CCU absolutely blew out the Highlanders in the second half. The scoreboard read a 23 point margin, but it felt more like a 40 point win. Danny Nieman doesn't pile up stats, but he's a glue guy. His play in the first five minutes of the second half sparked the rout.
UNSUNG HERO: Jon Pack
Jon Pack is used to getting a few minutes here and there, but with Radford feeding 7 foot 1 Latvian Martins Abele, the 6-foot 11 Pack came in and did a good job of slowing him down. With 5 points, 5 rebounds and 3 blocks in 15 minutes, this was Pack's best performance of the year.
SETTING A RECORD
CCU hit the 20 win mark before February 1st, the fastest in Big South history.
THURSDAY SHOWDOWN
Despite rolling up a record setting win streak, CCU has a mere one game lead on Liberty. The Flames come to Kimbel Arena on Thursday night. CCU let a 10 point lead slip late in Lynchburg and hung on for a narrow win to give Cliff Ellis his 600th win. If the Chants can beat the Flames, it should be smooth sailing to another NIT bid and home cooking for the Big South Tournament and the chance at the bigger prize: the NCAA's
