Flames limp into key game with Coastal Carolina

CONWAY, S.C. — Like many on Liberty’s basketball team this season, center Joel Vander Pol has been playing hurt. The injury list heading into the start of the Big South season for the Flames was lengthy. Forward John Brown and Sommy Ogukwe were already out for the season with knee injuries. Freshman forward Tomasz Gielo has yet to play after suffering a dislocated elbow in an October practice. Wing David Minaya [groin] and forward Antwan Burrus [concussion] played through pain Thursday at Campbell.

Vander Pol has not been exempt.

“I had a herniated disc in my back,” he said after a career-best night, 20 points and nine rebounds, at Campbell on Thursday. “It’s just been something I’ve been getting therapy for. I’ve been rehabbing with [trainer] Aaron [Schreiner] every day. It’s affected me, there’s pain in my leg. But once I get going in the game and get it warmed up, it’s not too bad.”

Vander Pol was the best player on the floor for Liberty in its 96-82 loss to the Camels. Defensively, he was instrumental in his ability to front Campbell forward Eric Griffin, holding the talented post to nine points and five rebounds, well below his season averages. Vander Pol also got Griffin into foul trouble, giving him room to work on offense. With space down low, he was able to use his athletic frame to score around the basket.

“Joel was as good as anybody on the court tonight,” Liberty coach Dale Layer said. “Joel’s been battling some injuries. He looks better. He’s moving better. He’s a little more confident. He took the challenge of playing against Griffin very personally and seriously, and it was good to see Joel step up. He works extremely hard, and he continues to improve.”

That improvement will be tested again today when the Flames make [presumably] their final regular-season trip to Coastal Carolina’s tiny Kimbel Arena to face the Chanticleers. Tip off is at 2 p.m. The Chants were expected to move into their new, 3,200-seat campus arena this season, but construction delays have forced Coastal to play this season out at cozy Kimbel, which seats 999.

The Chanticleers have won the last two Big South regular-season championships and won 28 games in each of those years. They’re off to another fast start. They’ve won six of their first seven games, including victories against LSU and Clemson, and their only loss was a two-point defeat at the buzzer at Florida International.

“They’re better than they were last year,” Layer said. “Both of their inside guys [Sam McLaurin and Jon Pack], they’ve both improved tremendously. [Forward Chris] Gradnigo is as good as anybody in our league. [Kierre] Greenwood and [Anthony] Raffa are experienced, tough-minded scoring guards. I think they deserve all the recognition they’ve gotten to this point. Somebody’s got to beat them to dethrone them.”

Beating Coastal will be a monumental task for a Liberty team that has lost five straight and has just one win this season against a Division I team, a three-point win at William & Mary on Nov. 14.

As well as Vander Pol played defensively against Griffin on Thursday, the Flames were awful as a whole on defense. Campbell entered the week third in the conference in scoring at 80.8 points per game and bested that mark by nearly 16 points against the Flames. The Camels shot 60 percent in the first half and 51.7 percent in the second and got to the free-throw line 43 times as Liberty committed 33 fouls.

Coastal averaged 80.0 points per game heading into the week and scored 87 in a win here over VMI on Thursday. The Chanticleers ranked second in the league in field-goal percentage behind Campbell and are diverse offensively, getting scoring from everywhere on the floor.

And, for the first time since last February, coach Cliff Ellis’ squad is playing without the specter of looming NCAA violations. On Monday, the NCAA ruled that Coastal was guilty of a secondary violation when former player Desmond Holloway received a t-shirt valued at $25 during a March 2010 recruiting visit. Holloway, the team’s leading scorer, was suspended last February and left school to play professionally in Europe. No further sanctions will be taken against the program.

Ellis, speaking to the Myrtle Beach Sun News, likened the ruling to “a 56-mile-an-hour speeding ticket in a 55-mile-an-hour zone.”

“We never got a letter of inquiry,” Ellis told the Sun News. “Let’s go through that. We’ve never gotten a letter of inquiry. I called the NCAA. Our administration called the NCAA, and that’s where all of this investigative stuff [began]. We wanted to make sure that our program is as clean as we thought it was — it is. We run a clean program.”