The Coastal Carolina men's basketball team beat the VMI Keydets 89-81 on Thursday night at Kimbel Arena in Conway. Anthony Raffa and Chad Gray had 25 points and 9 rebounds each to lead the Chanticleers to victory in the Big South Conference Tournament Semifinals.
Coastal Carolina led by just 42-41 at halftime. VMI took a brief second half lead but Coastal pulled away in the second half thanks to Gray and Raffa leading the way. The big differences were CCU's 44-24 rebounding edge together with red hot 56 percent shooting from the field.
VMI was led by a game-high 27 points from Austin Kenon as the Keydets ended the season with an 18-13 record.
Top seeded CCU (28-4) advances to take on UNC Asheville in the Big South Conference Tournament Championship game Saturday at 4 p.m. in Conway. UNCA beat High Point 62-45 in the other Big South semifinal game. The winner of the Big South title contest earns an automatic berth in the NCAA Tournament. The 28 wins ties a school record.
WPDE Sports Director Rich Chrampanis has his post-game analysis from Thursday night's game
HANGING WITH THE KEYDETS
Coming into the game, everyone knew the pace would be helter skelter. It was remarkable that the game was 37-30 at the half. Even though that is a low scoring VMI game, the pace was frantic from start to finish. The level of play was outstanding and the sequence from about the 16 minute mark to the 8 minute mark of the second half was like two heavyweight boxers throwing haymakers. Coastal turned it over 15 times to VMI's 7, but that's to be expected in a full court game. The fact that CCU was able to work it inside to Gray in crunch time was the key to this victory. Cliff Ellis told me that the three pointers early on were like fool's gold and that the Chants knew that had to win this game in the paint.
RAFFA'S SCARE
At Charleston Southern, it was Danny Nieman getting the wind knocked out of him and scaring the CCU faithful. On Thursday night, it was Anthony Raffa tweaking his ankle in the first half after making a basket. Ellis though the injury was serious, but Raffa slowly rose to his feet and took about a two minute breather and returned. Raffa's numbers were stellar: 25 points, 9 rebounds, 6 assists.
CLIFF'S PURPOSE PITCH
There's been a lot of talk about the Great 8 nickname (it's even trending locally on Twitter in). The Chants have now played three games in six days and it will be four games in eight days. When I asked coach about the team's energy level heading into the final, the coach bristled a bit saying that he's not worried about this team. We (the media) can talk about it all we want, but Ellis sent the message sternly that his team will be ready. Ellis has played the angle of "us against the world" and it's worked.
THE FINAL HURDLE
UNC-Asheville came to Kimbel Arena and got national headlines with Matt Dickey's buzzer beater. Last year, CCU was tight and had one of its worst shooting games of the season to fall to Winthrop. The Chants must come out loose on Saturday and feed off the Kimbel crowd which was outstanding on Thursday night. It's the mental aspect that is more important than x's and o's and matchups. That being said, Coastal needs to continue to pound inside to Sam McLaurin and Chad Gray. If that happens, the Great Eight will be a part of the Great 68.
