CCU Falls to Troy in Season Finale; Cuthbertson Scores 1,000th Career Point

Conway, S.C. (WBTW) —  Zac Cuthbertson scored a game-high 19 points and in the process reached the 1,000^thcareer-point milestone, but it was not enough as Coastal Carolina fell to Troy 74-67 in the regular-season finale.

CCU led for most of the game, but the Trojans outscored CCU 10-0 over the final 1:42 of the game to pull out the seven-point win.

CCU struggled from the field all game only shooting 38 percent from the field. The Chants were even worse on its three-point attempts hitting two of its 17 attempts.

Over the past several weeks CCU has been shooting well over 80 percent at the free throw line, and even that suffered today as CCU hit 68 percent, 25-of-37.

The worse statistic of the day was CCU being outrebounded 43-38. Troy had 17 offensive rebounds which it turned into 13 second chance points.

Ebrima Dibba scored 14 points and had a game-high five assists and Tommy Burton Scored 13 points.

All eyes were on the senior from New Bern, N.C., who entered the game needing only nine points to reach the coveted milestone. Today’s crowd included a large contingent of Cuthbertson family and friends, but it almost didn’t happen for the senior. After only four minutes of the game, Cuthbertson went down hard and left the game, leaving the HTC Center eerily silent. He did not play the rest of the first half and it was unknown if he would return.

In the second half Cuthbertson came out of the locker room sporting a knee brace and scored the team’s first six points of the second half and he was on his way. He finished scoring 17 of 19 points in the second half.

Troy was led by Alex Hicks who scored 15 points. K.J. Simon came off the bench for the Trojans to score 12 points and Davion Thomas also came off the bench to score 11. Darian Adams also reached double-digits with 10.

Both teams struggled in the opening half with neither team shooting very well. CCU did shoot a little better at 39 percent to take a slim 34-29 lead into the locker room at halftime.

Burton led the way with 11 points and Dibba had eight with Sanders scoring seven.

Thomas came off the bench to lead Troy with eight points and Johnson had seven as the Trojans only shot 27 percent from the field.

The Chants will now make their way to New Orleans for the Sun Belt Championship which runs March 14-17. The Chants first opponents will be released later by the Sun Belt Conference.