AJ Dancler and Joshua Beadle each scored 26 points to lead Coastal Carolina to an 85-83 victory over Marshall in a Sun Belt Conference game on Wednesday night at the Cam Henderson Center in Huntington, West Virginia. The win was Coastal Carolina’s first road victory against Marshall.
Coastal Carolina (10-9, 3-4 SBC) held a 13-point lead in the second half before Marshall tied the score at 80 with less than a minute remaining. Nadjrick Peat put Coastal back ahead with a dunk assisted by Rasheed Jones with 34 seconds left. Head coach Justin Gray commented, “Those guards made big plays when it mattered. AJ made shot after shot, Beadle made shot after shot, and Rasheed made the right play to find Nadjrick for the finish.”
After a defensive stop, Beadle extended the lead by making two free throws with 18 seconds left. Marshall’s Noah Otshudi hit a three-pointer to cut the deficit to one point, but Beadle added another free throw with seven seconds remaining for an 85-83 advantage.
Marshall (11-7, 3-3 SBC) had two final opportunities but missed both attempts as time expired. Gray noted his team’s perseverance: “We talk about resiliency and responding the right way all the time, and our guys did that tonight.”
Dancler went 8-of-11 from the field and was perfect on seven free throws. Beadle finished shooting 9-of-15 from the floor and made seven of nine free throws. Jones contributed 13 points and three assists; Peat delivered what proved to be the game-winning basket.
Coastal led at halftime by seven points and finished shooting nearly 57 percent from the field, including more than 45 percent from beyond the arc while converting on almost all their free throws.
Otshudi led Marshall with 30 points; Jalen Speer added 24.
Coastal Carolina will next play Georgia Southern on Saturday, January 17.
The win marked several milestones for Coastal Carolina this season. The team matched its total number of wins from last season earlier in its schedule compared to last year. They also recorded their fifth true road win of this campaign—the most since achieving five such victories during the 2021–22 season—and snapped losing streaks against both Marshall overall and at Marshall’s home court. Additionally, it was their best shooting half of this season so far and continued a streak of high-percentage shooting games.
Beadle set a new career-high in scoring for a second consecutive game while Dancler posted his third game this season with at least twenty points. The trio of Beadle, Dancler, and Jones combined for sixty-five points—their second time surpassing sixty together this year—and it was also notable as Coastal had two players score twenty-five or more in one contest for the first time since March of 2019.
Tristan Thompson also connected on his first three-point field goal since November.
