CCU Notebook: Coastal game at Louisiana has been rescheduled because of Hurricane Delta
Coastal Carolina had its game with Louisiana moved up a week to this upcoming Saturday to adjust for other games in the Sun Belt Conference being impacted by the coronavirus, but the Chanticleers won’t be able to play in Lafayette this weekend.
Hurricane Delta is expected to make landfall along the Gulf Coast and possibly go through Lafayette on Friday, and it has caused the game to be rescheduled to next Wednesday. Kickoff is set for 7:30 p.m. (Eastern) and the game will be broadcast on ESPN.
The storm made landfall near Cancun on the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico early Wednesday morning and is expected to pack hurricane-force winds and a large storm surge when it makes landfall in Louisiana.
The area is already beleaguered after being hit hard by Category 4 Hurricane Laura in late August.
If Cajun Field and its facilities are too damaged or unsafe, the teams have agreed to potentially move the game to Brooks Stadium in Conway. That will be determined by Sunday.
“If it does get hit pretty bad up there it will be a challenge to get your team there and get ready to play,” CCU head coach Jamey Chadwell said.
The SEC announced Wednesday that the Missouri at LSU football game scheduled for Saturday night in Baton Rouge, Louisiana has been moved to Columbia, Missouri.
The Wednesday night spot became available on ESPN because of the postponement from Wednesday to Dec. 12 of the Georgia Southern-Appalachian State game due to COVID-19 cases in the App. State program. Louisiana’s scheduled game with App. State this Wednesday was postponed first, leading CCU and Louisiana to move their game up from Oct. 17 to Oct. 10.
As the only Sun Belt team ranked in either national poll -- Louisiana is No. 23 in both the Amway Coaches Poll and AP Top 25 -- the Chants are anxious to play the Ragin Cajuns. Both teams are 3-0.
“To us it doesn’t really matter,” CCU senior linebacker Teddy Gallagher said. “We’ll play them on Wednesday at 3 a.m. in a Wendy’s parking lot. We don’t really care where we play, when we play, we just want to play these guys.”
CCU won 30-28 in Lafayette in 2018, but Louisiana handed Coastal its worst defeat within the Sun Belt in its three-plus seasons in the conference last year in a nationally-televised Thursday night game in Conway, 48-7.
“It was not just a bad loss, but just the way we played and the way our players handled the situation. . . . We didn’t play well but also we just sort of gave up to be truthful,” Chadwell said. “I thought last year during that game was the one game where guys just didn’t compete and do the things necessary. I know we’re better from that. Sometimes you’ve got to go through some painful valleys, that was definitely a painful one.
“But we’ve improved since then, I know our culture has and I know our mindset has. I don’t think last year we thought we could win that game at all or compete with those guys if you look back on it. But I know this year our guys think differently.”
National attention
Coastal received votes in the Associated Press Top 25 poll this week for the first time in the program’s young FBS history.
Coastal garnered 25 points in the AP poll as well as the most points in their history in the USA Today Amway Coaches poll with 38. The Chants have received votes in the coaches’ poll in four consecutive weeks. Both polls include all FBS teams whether they have played yet or not.
The Chants have the 35th-most votes in both polls, and are just ahead of Oklahoma in the AP poll and both Utah and Memphis in the coaches’ poll.
“It’s always nice receiving those votes and getting that recognition from outside,” said senior wide receiver Sam Denmark, who transferred from Virginia Tech prior to the 2019 season. “But we don’t let that get our head big. We always knew what we can do, and we always knew if we continue to work hard everything else will come.”
Big man on campus
CCU redshirt freshman Grayson McCall was tabbed the Sun Belt Offensive Player of the Week for his performance in the Chants’ 52-23 win over Arkansas State on Saturday, and was also named to the weekly Davey O’Brien National Quarterback Award’s Great 8 list for the second time this season.
McCall was 20 of 29 for 322 yards, four touchdowns and one interception -- which were all season/career highs -- while also rushing a career-high 17 times for 44 yards.
McCall was also on the O’Brien Great 8 list on Sept. 14 following the season-opening win over Kansas. The quarterbacks joining McCall on the Week 5 award list were Shane Buechele (SMU), Matt Corral (Ole Miss), Max Duggan (TCU), Mac Jones (Alabama), Devin Leary (NC State), Zach Smith (Tulsa), and Zach Wilson (BYU). The National Quarterback of the Week is announced on Wednesdays.
McCall turned the ball over twice Saturday for his first turnovers of the season, a botched handoff exchange for a fumble and a late throw over the middle after a scramble for an interception.
“We thought we had a good player there, and for the first three weeks he’s exceeded our expectations,” Chadwell said. “The one question mark was he really hadn’t been hit much up to that point and hadn’t had any true adversity, and they hit him around pretty good Saturday and also he did have the [turnovers] and had a couple maybe misreads that he hadn’t had up to that point. And he came back and responded, especially to the [interception] and played really well.”
McCall has the fourth-best QB rating in the country at 207.7, which is behind only Jones of Alabama (222.1), Wilson of BYU (221.9) and Corral of Mississippi (211.9), and is eighth in Total QBR at 84.0. Corral leads at 94.8.
“He’s made our offense really go because he’s been able to run our option game and passing he’s been able to put the ball where it needs to be and made us so far hard to defend,” Chadwell said.
McCall was quarantined for about three weeks in July, Chadwell said, so he was behind at the start of fall camp in early August. But his snaps increased when junior Fred Payton suffered a mild Achilles tendon injury that limited his ability to practice for a couple weeks.
“He just took over during that time frame and really showed what he was capable of,” Chadwell said. “It was a battle to make that decision but we as a staff just felt this guy gives us the best chance to win at a high level, and he’s proven that so far.”
Viral video produced
The video on Twitter was up to approximately 424,000 views as of Wednesday afternoon.
CCU senior linebackers Gallagher and Silas Kelly had a little fun Saturday on the field following CCU’s 52-23 win over Arkansas State and their video has gone viral.
They comically called out ESPN analyst Pat McAfee in a 30-second clip for picking A-State to cover 3.5 points against CCU during a segment Saturday morning on College GameDay, while also instructing him on how to correctly pronounce ‘Chants.’
“It’s pretty funny. I didn’t think it was going to be that popular,” Gallagher said.
McAfee responded on Twitter, saying, “Boys . . . I was wrong. I didn’t know that humans like you 2 existed on the CHANTS roster. If I knew those mullets were flying around on that teal field, we all know I would’ve swung that hammer DAHN on the Myrtle Beach savages. That’s on me. I apologize.”
Gallagher said he was taping up before Saturday’s game when he saw McAfee pick the Red Wolves on GameDay, though the volume wasn’t on so he couldn’t hear what McAfee was saying. Gallagher said CCU coordinator of player personnel Colton Korn brought it up after the game and encouraged the two seniors to reply.
Kelly has been derided by commenters on Twitter for misspeaking when he used the word ‘produced’ instead of ‘pronounced’ before quickly correcting himself.
“[Korn] was like, ‘Do you guys want to do it again?” Gallagher said. “. . . We were like, ‘Whatever, we’re just going to post it.’ We do one take, that’s how we roll. I posted it, then I would look at my phone and I had to turn my notifications off. I really didn’t think it was going to be that popular but it was. He responded and it got even more popular.”
This story was originally published October 7, 2020 at 3:43 PM.
