Coastal Carolina Chanticleers at Wake Forest Demon Deacons

Crawford scores 19, Wake Forest beats Coastal Carolina 83-77

Freshman Bryant Crawford scored 19 points with a season-best five 3-pointers, and Wake Forest held on to beat Coastal Carolina 83-77 on Friday night for its fifth straight win.

Those five victories have come by a combined 23 points, and compared to some of the others, this might count as lopsided: The Demon Deacons' one-point win at Rutgers was sandwiched by three-point victories over Arkansas and UCLA.

"We know how to gut out a win," Crawford said, "but it also says that we have to focus more and continue to do the things that get us those leads, and continue to put our foot on the gas when we're up."

Greg McClinton added four of his 13 points in the final minute, Dinos Mitoglou also scored 13 with three 3s and John Collins had 12 for Wake Forest while Codi Miller-McIntyre finished with 10 in his second game back from a broken foot for the Demon Deacons (8-2).

They shot 55 percent and led by 12 with seven minutes left before weathering a rally by the hot-shooting Chanticleers to prolong their longest winning streak since the 2013-14 team won its first five.

Badou Diagne had a season-high 24 points and Jaylen Shaw added a career-best 21 to lead the Chanticleers (6-5), who had their three-game winning streak snapped.

Coastal Carolina pulled to 77-75 on two free throws by Shaw with 1:23 remaining before Mitoglou restored Wake Forest's four-point lead with two foul shots with 1:09 left. Kevin Holmes Jr. missed an open 3-pointer with about a minute left and the Demon Deacons worked the clock before McClinton hit a layup with 33.6 seconds left to make it 81-75.

"That was just huge, and you can't afford to have that," Coastal Carolina coach Cliff Ellis said. "You know that each possession is huge. We had a shot."

Elijah Wilson went coast to coast for the Chanticleers but missed the layup and the rebound clipped off his fingertips and went out of bounds with 24.6 seconds left. Wake Forest ran the clock again before Miller-McIntyre found McClinton with a layup that pushed the lead to 83-75 with 12 seconds to play.

Shivaughn Wiggins finished with 12 points for Coastal Carolina, which shot 65 percent in the second half after making just 34.5 percent in the opening 20 minutes.

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TIP-INS

TOUGH ROAD

STAT SHEET

UP NEXT

Coastal Carolina plays host to Alabama State on Sunday.

Wake Forest plays host to No. 10 Xavier on Tuesday night.

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Follow Joedy McCreary at http://twitter.com/joedyap. His work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/joedy-mccreary

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AP college basketball site: http://collegebasketball.ap.org

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