CCU Football Notebook: Showdown with Louisiana moved up to Saturday because of COVID-19
Coastal Carolina was planning to have an off week this upcoming weekend, its second in three weeks sandwiched around Saturday’s 52-23 win over Arkansas State.
But nothing is for sure in a college football season being played through the coronavirus pandemic, and the Chants are now scheduled to play on Saturday.
It’s game at Louisiana has been moved up a week from Oct. 17 to this upcoming Saturday.
The change was made because Louisiana’s game against Appalachian State scheduled for Wednesday night has been postponed due to a coronavirus outbreak within the App. State football team.
The Winston-Salem Journal reported 19 positive cases within the Mountaineers program. An App. State student has also died from coronavirus complications, according to the student’s family.
CCU will kick off at Cajun Field in Lafayette, La., at noon (Eastern) and the game will be broadcast on ESPN2, giving the Chants their fourth straight game on national television.
Both teams are 3-0. The Ragin Cajuns, who went 11-3 last year and played App. State in the Sun Belt Conference championship game, have a win at then-nationally ranked Iowa State and narrow Sun Belt victories over Georgia State and Georgia Southern.
“Lafayette’s a great team, but we’re a good team too,” CCU junior linebacker Jeffrey Gunter said. “I think we just proved that, and we’re trying to take over the Sun Belt.”
CCU and Louisiana have split two meetings, with CCU winning 30-28 in Lafayette in 2018 and the Ragin Cajuns winning 48-7 in a nationally-televised Thursday night game last season at Brooks Stadium.
“We just came out there flat,” CCU senior running back C.J. Marable said of last year’s beat down. “We can’t do that this year. They’re a good team, so we have to come out there with the same energy we have in the past three games.”
Dodging a derailment
While several Sun Belt teams have had to cancel or postpone games due to coronavirus cases, the Chants have managed to avoid any significant COVID-19 issues and did not have a positive test on the team this past week, according to Assistant Athletic Director for Media Relations Kevin Davis.
So Chadwell believes his players have been doing the right thing up to now, specifically avoiding bars, parties and large gatherings around campus.
“We’re trying to do something that’s never been done at this school, we want to get to a bowl game, we want to leave a legacy with this team, and to do that you’ve got to make sacrifices now so you can enjoy the fruits of it later,” Chadwell said.
“We can have 99 guys do it, but if one person goes and makes a bad decision that affects the rest of it and it can totally derail it. So you hope you lay out what’s at stake. By them being diligent, by them doing the little things, yeah it might take away from their college experience right now, but man when we do get to let loose it’s going to be one heck of a party. So you hope your coaching’s strong enough, you hope your leadership is strong enough.”
Arkansas State canceled its previous two games prior to Saturday because coronavirus cases and the resulting player isolations and quarantines decimated position groups.
“This game will be interesting because Arkansas State had all those issues and I’m anxious to see what happens from a game standpoint from that when we test again,” Chadwell said. “That’s the deal you have to worry about every week. You just don’t know.”
Marable’s major milestone
C.J. Marable could not have hand-picked a better opponent to reach a milestone against.
Marable, who was shunned by Arkansas State in his recruiting process out of high school after committing to the Red Wolves, eclipsed 3,000 rushing yards in his collegiate career Saturday.
Marable gained 63 yards rushing with a touchdown on 15 carries and added four receptions for 25 yards and a touchdown. He now has 3,032 rushing yards in one season at Presbyterian in the FCS and three at the FBS level at CCU. He’s just 6 rushing yards shy of 2,000 at Coastal.
“I feel blessed to be able to get the win and get the record against Arkansas State, obviously with what happened with me and Arkansas State, so it’s a blessing to be able to do that,” Marable said.
Had everything gone according to plan for Marable coming out of high school in Decatur, Georgia, he would have been playing against the Chants on Saturday.
Marable was committed to A-State and around signing day, he said the team’s coaches told him he needed to skip the fall semester because of a low ACT score and he could instead enroll and join the team in the spring semester in 2016. Marable said he then lost contact with Red Wolves coach Blake Anderson and was essentially ghosted.
He was offered a scholarship at Presbyterian and took it, then led the Big South Conference in rushing with 1,038 yards as a freshman in 2017.
When PC announced during that season it would become a non-scholarship program by 2020, that freed its players to transfer without penalty. Marable signed with CCU, in part because he’d have the opportunity to play A-State once a year.
“For him to get it versus Arkansas State, I know that means a lot to him,” Chadwell said. “I’m happy for him because he chose to come here when we were nothing, and he went from being a freshman of the year to getting limited carries. He worked and he’s never complained and he’s been good for that backfield. So I’m happy for him. That’s awesome for him to get that and I think that speaks to his work ethic.”
Short yardage
▪ Junior cornerback D’Jordan Strong, a junior college transfer, recorded his first interception at CCU in the first quarter, but later missed plays with an apparent injury.
▪ Coastal won the special teams battle, going perfect on kicks including a 42-yard field goal by Massimo Biscardi and recovering a high and short Biscardi kickoff that landed between A-State players around the Red Wolves 31-yard-line.
▪ CCU recorded three sacks – two by Tarron Jackson and one by Gunter – and has 13 on the season among 26 tackles for a loss of yards.
