Chanticleers ready for spring game

As his Coastal Carolina football team stretched before its final spring practice Thursday, coach Joe Moglia talked about what he felt the Chanticleers had accomplished these last few weeks.

Most importantly, he said, aside from a few too many muscle pulls early on, the Chants head into their spring game Saturday afternoon at Doug Shaw Memorial Stadium in Myrtle Beach having sustained no significant injuries.

That was largely by design as the coaching staff took every precaution with its veterans and proven contributors while using the spring to take a longer look at the team’s younger players.

“It was a good opportunity for the older guys who have made significant contributions to frankly just keep their skills sharp but focus on teaching and coaching the younger guys,” Moglia said. “And it gave us an opportunity to take a look at a lot of younger guys. … All in all, I feel good about what we did in the spring.”

The Chants will wrap up, as usual, with a spring game open to fans. It moves to Myrtle Beach this year because the new teal turf being installed in Brooks Stadium is not ready for action just yet.

And that’s not the only change to the spring game this year.

Moglia said the event will have a different format with more live action and less of the situational drills that gave the “game” more of the feel of a practice in past years.

“We’re going to do it a little differently than we have in the past,” Moglia said. “We allowed our leadership council to draft teams. So we’re going to have a team dressed in all black and a team dressed in all white. Each team will have their own offense, their own defense, their own special teams. We’ll take the top guys out relatively early. We’ll do everything like it’s game conditions. We’ll be live most of the time, but not all the time.

“We’ll play it like a game. It will be a lot of fun, I think, for our guys and hopefully because it’s more like a regular game the fans appreciate what we have going on.”

Still, a lot of the players who fans have become familiar with will be limited or sitting out entirely.

Quarterback Alex Ross has not participated this spring while recovering from offseason shoulder surgery, star safety Richie Sampson has also been recovering from shoulder surgery and starting wide receivers John Israel and Bruce Mapp, defensive end Roderick Holder and tight ends Thomas Pauciello and Craig Weick will also be among the players sitting out the game Saturday while protecting minor injuries.

Senior Michael Church, the team’s primary backup quarterback the last two seasons, will guide one of the offenses while redshirt-freshman Josh Stilley and sophomore Myrtle Beach High School product Tyler Keane will be on the other squad.

Running back De’Angelo Henderson, who rushed for 1,534 yards and 20 touchdowns as a sophomore in 2014, said he will be active Saturday, but probably not enough for his liking.

“I’ve been begging them to let me go,” he said of having his reps limited during the spring. “I’m going to play Saturday. I’m going to try to sneak in a little bit more than what I’m supposed to.”

While Mapp won’t be playing in the spring game, he’s been active throughout the spring and gave his assessment of the progress the team’s made.

“The defense is making it hard on us, actually. They’ve got that veteran d-line so they can get to the quarterback kind of fast and the DBs actually stepped up a lot. They had a great offseason,” Mapp.

Henderson said sophomore defensive backs Anthony Chesley and Dontay Hears, in particular, have caught his eye.

But he and Mapp were both in agreement in naming the star of the spring.

“Gary Bradshaw is a stud,” Henderson said of the Chants’ 5-foot-7 junior receiver. “He’s probably the MVP of the spring. Gary makes plays. He catches the ball and he’s fast. That combination is deadly. He’s probably the MVP of the spring, I’ll give it to him.”

Said Mapp: “Come see the Gary Bradshaw Show. That’s the one to watch.”

This story was originally published April 10, 2015 at 6:12 PM with the headline "Chanticleers ready for spring game."