Coastal Carolina…Building A Giant Killer?

Chad Gray basketball

With a few weeks remaining before college basketball begins, let’s take a moment and look away from the top tier programs that grab all the headlines and look at a college whose best hope for basketball success is to become a ‘giant killer’. This has worked for teams in the past, with Gonzaga going from an upstart to being a perennial powerhouse, and with Butler moving from a nice story to the championship game just this past season.

For Coastal Carolina, they are a team trying to build from the ground up, as head coach Cliff Ellis took over a team that had not had a winning season since 1994, and last year Ellis led the team to a whopping 28-win season:

“Last year went way beyond anybody’s [expectations],” he said. “… To go from being picked eighth in the league to winning it, that’s a pretty big turnaround. I’m more than pleased with where we are, and I just want to keep looking ahead and not looking back.”

So, will Coastal Carolina be one of the teams to keep one eye on during the season in case you need to know about a possible bracket-busting upset. It’s hard to say. Three starters from last season are gone, although the leading scorer, Chad Gray, is back. It is possible that we are seeing the birth of the next giant-killer, so with the roster changes, this is an important year to see if last season was an aberration.

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