CONWAY, S.C. – The No. 7 nationally-ranked and 2023 Sun Belt Conference Regular-Season Champions Coastal Carolina will open up its 2023 Guardian Credit Union Sun Belt Conference Baseball Championship presented by Troy University play on Wednesday, May 24, at 5 p.m. ET/4 p.m. ET at Riverwalk Stadium in Montgomery, Ala.
 
The No. 1-seeded Chanticleers will play the lower-seeded first round winner, which pits No. 7 James Madison versus No. 10 Old Dominion (4 p.m. ET) and No. 8 Georgia State versus No. 9 Georgia Southern (7:30 p.m. ET).
 
  • Wednesday, May 24 @ 5 p.m. ET
• Thursday, May 25 @ 1:30 p.m. ET OR 8:30 p.m. ET
• Friday, May 26 @ 7:30 p.m. ET OR Saturday, May 27 @ 1:30 p.m. ET
• Sunday, May 28 @ 2 p.m. ET
 
  • Headlining the conference award winners for the Chants was head coach Gary Gilmore being named the Ron Maestri Coach of the Year and Caden Bodine tabbed the 2023 Sun Belt Conference Freshman of the Year.
• Bodine was joined on the All-Sun Belt first team by junior Teddy Sharkey (RP), super senior Nick Lucky (OF), and sophomore Derek Bender (DH).
• Named to the All-Sun Belt second team were senior Zack Beach (1B), super senior Payton Eeles (2B), and senior Graham Brown (OF).
 
  • The Chanticleers immediately turned heads in the Sun Belt Conference in their first season in the league in 2017, going 22-7-1 in conference play to win both the Sun Belt Conference East Division and Sun Belt Conference Regular-Season championships.
• Coastal went on to repeat in 2018 and added the Sun Belt Conference Tournament Championship title, posting a 23-7 regular-season conference record along the way.
• Despite slipping to 15-13 in conference play and finishing fifth in the regular-season standings in 2019, the Chanticleers ran through the Sun Belt Conference Tournament to repeat champions.
• After 2020 was canceled, the Chants had their worst conference season in over 25 years in 2021, finishing the conference regular-season slate at 9-12 overall.
• Last year in 2022, CCU went 21-8-1 in Sun Belt Conference play, which included five Sun Belt Conference series sweeps over Arkansas State, Appalachian State, UTA, Little Rock, and Troy, as well as a road series win at then-nationally-ranked Georgia Southern and at home versus South Alabama.
• This season, the Chants won every Sun Belt Conference series on the year and won the regular-season conference title outright with a 23-7 conference ledger. CCU swept three conference weekend series - at Georgia State (March 31-April 2), at South Alabama (May 12-14), and versus Marshall (May 19-20).
 
  • Coastal will be playing in its sixth Sun Belt Conference Championship Tournament this week, having won the postseason championship event in both 2018 and 2019.
• The Chanticleers are 10-4 all-time in Sun Belt Conference Tournament play and have not lost more than one game in any year. CCU was beaten by Texas State 7-5 in a single-elimination game in 2017 and then ran off five consecutive wins in 2019 after losing in the first round to UTA 9-8 in 10 innings.
• In 2021, the Chanticleers went 1-1 in Pool Play with a 15-1 win in seven innings over Little Rock before falling to the eventual 2021 champions in South Alabama 14-7 in game two.
• The Chants lost last year to Troy 6-4 in a single elimination game, as the tournament, like in 2017, was shortened due to rain.
 
  • Coastal Carolina used a three-game sweep of Marshall (May 19-20) over the final weekend of the regular season to win the 2023 Sun Belt Conference Regular-Season Championship title outright.
• The 2023 regular-season championship is the 19th overall for the program and the third since the Chants joined the Sun Belt Conference prior to the 2017 season.
 
    Sun Belt Regular-Season Championships:  2017, 2018, 2023
    Big South Regular-Season Championships:  1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1999, 2002, 2005, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2016
 
  • For the first time this season, the Chanticleers were ranked in a national top-25 poll on March 27.
• Coastal came in at No. 19 in the D1Baseball Top 25 Rankings and at No. 28 in the National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association (NCBWA) NCAA Division I poll in that poll on March 27.
• Since then, the Chants have been in at least one national poll in each of the last eight weeks.
• In the most recent polls that came out on May 22, the Chants were in all six polls - No. 7 (D1Baseball), No. 7 (USA Today Coaches Pol), No. 8 (Perfect Game), No. 8 (Baseball America), No. 8 (NCBWA), and No. 11 (Collegiate Baseball).
• Prior to this season, the last time that the Chanticleers were ranked in the top 10 in the majority of the national polls was back in 2010, when they broke into the top 10 in three of the five polls on April 19, 2010.
• Since being ranked, the Chanticleers have gone 23-9 overall.
 
  • This season, the Chanticleers have played one of the toughest schedules in all of NCAA Division I.
• In fact, Chants finished the regular season with the 15th-toughest schedule in all of NCAA Division I baseball and the toughest among teams not in a Power 5 conference.
 
  • The Chanticleers went 23-7 in conference play and won the regular-season championship title this year.
• The last time CCU went 23-7 in league play and won the regular-season championship was back in 2018, in which the Chanticleers went on to win their first Sun Belt Conference Championship Tournament.
 
  • Coastal heads into the Sun Belt Conference Baseball Championship Tournament with hopes to continue their season at the NCAA Regionals in two weeks.
• The Chanticleers have an RPI of 13 entering the week of play, which is the highest in the Sun Belt and the second-highest among all non-Power-5 schools.
• With that said, the Chants control their own conference postseason and NCAA Regional destiny by just winning.
 
  • Coastal will be playing its first neutral-site games of the season this week at the 2023 Guardian Credit Union Sun Belt Conference Baseball Championship Tournament in Montgomery, Ala.
• The Chanticleers are 1-2 all-time at Riverwalk Stadium in Montgomery, having split in Pool Play in 2021 with a win over Little Rock and a loss to South Alabama, and then suffering a first-round loss to Troy last year in the rain-shortened tournament.
 
  • Coastal has been riding a wave of momentum the last month, and it has come at the right time as the Chanticleers enter postseason play.
• The Chants enter the tournament having won each of their last seven games and nine of their last 10 contests.
• In May, the Chants have gone 9-3 overall and won each of its last eight games versus conference opponents.
 
  • This season, the Chanticleers have lost two games to the same team just once.
• The lone team to beat the Chanticleers twice this season has been the Clemson Tigers, with a home win over CCU on April 4 and a road victory in Conway, S.C., on May 10.
• Overall, CCU's 17 losses have come to 16 different teams, with one loss each to VCU (Feb. 19), No. 21 NC State (Feb. 22), Creighton (Feb. 26), College of Charleston (Feb. 28), Illinois (March 11), James Madison (March 18), Texas State (March 25), Clemson (April 4), Georgia Southern (April 7), No. 14 Campbell (April 10), Old Dominion (April 14), No. 23/24 Southern Miss (April 23), No. 2 Wake Forest (April 25), Louisiana (April 28), Charlotte (May 2), and Appalachian State (May 5), and the two defeats to Clemson.
 

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