As has become commonplace in college basketball, Coastal Carolina is undergoing nearly a full turnover of its roster for the upcoming 2026-27 season.<\/p>\n
Eleven newcomers will join three players who are returning from this past season.<\/p>\n
With six players expending their eligibility in 2026, Chanticleers third-year coach Justin Gray could have retained seven players.<\/p>\n
Four players transferred, and junior guard DaJohn Craig, junior forward Derrick Green and sophomore guard Tristan Thompson of Florence have remained in Conway.<\/p>\n
Craig and Thompson were generally the first two guards off the bench last season in CCU\u2019s guard-heavy offense that featured Joshua Beadle, Rasheed Jones and AJ Dancler, who all averaged at least 14.8 points and 32 minutes per game.<\/p>\n
Beadle was a grad student, while Jones transferred to Rutgers and Dancler transferred to South Florida.<\/p>\n
Craig (6\u20191\u2019\u2019, 165 pounds) averaged 13 minutes and 4.5 points per game, which was fifth on the team, while shooting 37% from three-point range, which was second on the team to Dancler.<\/p>\n
Thompson (6\u20195\u2019\u2019, 215) averaged 20 minutes, 4 points and 4.2 rebounds per game as a true freshman, and Green (6\u20199\u2019\u2019, 275) averaged 10.6 minutes, 2.1 points and 2.9 rebounds per game.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe kept three, and all three guys played some role throughout last season, which is good,\u201d Gray said. \u201cYou don\u2019t have to totally reteach everything, and they can teach some of the culture things we had.<\/p>\n
\u201c. . . I truly believe culture wins. I know you need talent, but if you have a strong enough culture to go through some stuff when it doesn\u2019t go your way and still continue to compete, it gives you a chance to stay in games and ultimately win.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Coastal Carolina forward Derrick Green grasps the ball\u00a0against Georgia Southernon Saturday, March 7 in the quarterfinals of the 2026 Sun Belt Conference Men’s Basketball Championship in Pensacola, Florida. (AJ Henderson\/Sun Belt Conference photo).<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Coastal went 19-13 in Gray\u2019s second season at the helm of the program and tied for second in the Sun Belt Conference regular season standings at 11-7 in league play.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As has become commonplace in college basketball, Coastal Carolina is undergoing nearly a full turnover of its roster…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":780613,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3723],"tags":[7,94981,21259,217,736,231,772,1544],"class_list":["post-780612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-basketball","tag-basketball","tag-ccu","tag-coastal-carolina","tag-college-basketball","tag-men","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-basketball","tag-ncaab"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116879579143007531","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/780612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=780612"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/780612\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/780613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=780612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=780612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=780612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}