CCU’s opponent Saturday has been living the nightmare the Chants have managed to avoid
Coastal Carolina, like the rest of college football, is trying to avoid what Arkansas State has been going through.
The Red Wolves (1-1), who are scheduled to play CCU (2-0) at Brooks Stadium at noon Saturday, have had to postpone games over each of the past two weeks because of a coronavirus outbreak within the program.
ASU head coach Blake Anderson said Monday the postponements were necessitated by the team being depleted at one specific position. The decimated position group was different each week, and the Wolves couldn’t complete a two-deep depth chart with players unavailable because they were in isolation or quarantine.
“We went through a couple tough weeks and it just kind of dominoed,” Anderson said. “We had guys coming back to the field on paper, but we had a heavy dose of guys who were just coming out of symptoms who just were not going to be ready to play on Saturday. We could tell very quickly they were not going to have enough time to acclimate back to play safely. We feel like we’ve come through it.”
The school postponed its home opener scheduled for Sept. 19 against Central Arkansas until Oct. 10, and announced last Wednesday that it had postponed its home game this past Saturday against Tulsa to a date to be determined.
ASU continued its practice schedule last week since it wasn’t the total amount of players unavailable that was the issue, but rather the inability to field a safe number of players at one position.
Anderson expects to have a nearly full roster for Saturday’s Sun Belt Conference opener for both teams.
“We have come out of it with a bunch of guys excited about playing and feeling much better . . . and feel like we’re in a position to move forward with some confidence over the next few weeks,” Anderson said. “We feel confident moving forward that the worst is behind us.”
Anderson said the issues started more than three weeks ago when he was forced to leave 22 players, including 10 starters, in Jonesboro, Arkansas, when the team traveled for a game against Kansas State on Sept. 12.
He declined to give the number of positive tests registered by his team over the past three weeks, or name the positions affected.
The Red Wolves lost 37-24 at No. 17 Memphis on Sept. 5 and upset Kansas State 35-31 despite being shorthanded before their unscheduled two-week break.
To his team’s credit, Coastal coach Jamey Chadwell said the Chants did not record a positive test last week and he doesn’t anticipate being without any players Saturday because of COVID-19, though this week’s test results were expected Wednesday afternoon.
“Every week you don’t know if you’re going to play until that game kicks off,” Chadwell said. “I think that’s the challenge with the virus, you don’t know exactly what’s going to happen.”
Because his team dealt with such a large outbreak, Anderson believes his team now has a better chance of getting through the rest of the season without another postponement or cancellation caused by his program.
“Having come through it with no serious lasting effects of it . . . the chances of you having another large scale environment like we’ve had over the course of the last two or three weeks, you’ve got to feel you can potentially avoid that because the sheer number of guys that can potentially be affected should be relatively small moving forward,” Anderson said.
Other teams in the Sun Belt have also been dealing with missed games.
South Alabama has postponed its game against Troy this weekend after suspending football workouts because of coronavirus concerns.
Human error in a lab caused Georgia State to miss its game at Charlotte last week. Panthers coach Shawn Elliott said he was told 15 minutes before the team bus was going to leave campus that four of his linebackers tested positive for COVID-19. The coaches and administration feared allowing players to ride on the bus could result in a major outbreak.
The players were retested that evening and the test results were negative, and Elliott later was informed a human error led to the false positives.
“It was real disappointing to be so close to leaving. We all wanted to play,” Elliott said. “It’s 2020 so expect the unexpected.”
Liberty extended
Coastal has extended its upcoming series of football games with longtime rival Liberty to 2029.
The Chants are hosting Liberty on Dec. 5 at Brooks Stadium because they added the Flames following the cancellation of games due to the coronavirus, and were already scheduled to play their former Big South Conference foe at home in 2023 and on the road in 2024.
The two universities have extended the series to include three more contests from 2027-29 – at Brooks Stadium in 2027 and in Lynchburg, Virginia, in both 2028 and ’29.
The overall series is tied at 7-7, and Coastal won the last meeting 42-7 at home on Nov. 17, 2016. Both programs have moved up from the Football Championship Subdivision to the Football Bowl Subdivision over the past few years. The Flames are currently an FBS independent.
An early honor
In just his second game back after missing the final 10 games last season and undergoing two surgeries on his knee, CCU senior linebacker Silas Kelly was named the Sun Belt’s Defensive Player of the Week for his performance in a 43-21 win over Campbell on Sept. 19.
He led the Chants with eight tackles, five of which were solo stops, and two sacks and two tackles for loss.
“I was nervous during the preseason because coming off the knee injury he just didn’t look as sharp, and not as ready to go and contribute at a high level,” Chadwell said. “Was he going to be able to throw his body around like you have to [in order] to play linebacker? And he’s exceeded expectations.
“It’s been awesome to see him rebound and recover this year.”
This story was originally published September 30, 2020 at 4:35 PM.
