Chants’ Mapp right on track

In his first year as a featured receiver in Coastal Carolina’s high-scoring offense, Bruce Mapp wasted no time breaking the Chanticleers’ single-season record with 71 catches last fall.

But the more impressive number might have been the much smaller one in the other column.

“He has tremendous hands and he’s probably as gifted as anybody I’ve ever coached that way,” offensive coordinator Dave Patenaude said this week. “When the ball’s in the air, the majority of the time he’s going to come down with it.

“Last year he had 71 or whatever catches; I think he only had two other balls that hit his hands that he didn’t catch. His catch percentage is insane, especially under the fire like that.”

Yet Patenaude and wide receivers coach Renato Diaz believe the 6-foot, 210-pound junior from Philadelphia can be even better this season.

And Mapp couldn’t agree more.

“A lot better,” he said Wednesday. “That’s why I’m glad Coach Diaz is my coach. He gets on me every day. Even the smallest things, he just wants me to be the best player. And I want to be the best player in the country at my position so I can help out my team more. I feel if I accomplish those goals, I’ll be doing what’s best for the team.

“It’s not really being an individual guy – it’s just setting a goal for yourself that can help the ultimate goal, which is to win a national championship.”

Mapp knows the numbers, though. He knows that his 959 receiving yards last fall were just 118 short of matching another single-season program record, and that he is on pace for a couple of the Chants’ career receiving marks as well.

But that’s mainly because his father Bruce Mapp Sr. keeps him constantly updated on such matters, and if anything, he says, he’d like to set those marks for his father.

“My biggest fan,” Mapp says of his dad. “From highlight tapes to newspaper articles, he keeps all of that. So if you ever want to know about me, he keeps track of all that.”

Finding his calling

The elder Mapp answers the phone back home in Philadelphia on Thursday evening expecting the call, and as promised, there’s no better historian on the development of Bruce Mapp Jr. than from his father.

It’s a fascinating story, really, and another reminder of how imperfect the college athletics recruiting process can be.

But to start at the beginning, Mapp had already shown himself to be a versatile athlete – his father is confident he could have been a successful point guard for a college basketball program – when heading into the sixth grade he expressed an interest in playing football.

“But I waited another year wanting to get his body to be more solid,” Bruce Sr. says.

Mapp would play football as a seventh grader, but ironically before his team’s season even began, he had already injured himself playing in the backyard with friends. He suspected his arm was broken, though he didn’t want to tell his father that and decided to push on despite starting out as a quarterback at the time.

As the story goes, after two scrimmages it was becoming more of a problem for him and it all came to a head on one fateful play in the first game of the season. Mapp was unable to secure a snap, fumbling on a key play to lose a game, and it was after that game that he finally got his arm checked out, changing the course of his football career forever.

“I’m thinking he got hurt in the game and the doctor said, ‘When did he break his arm?’ I said, ‘At the game.’ He said, ‘No, this happened three weeks ago, you can already see the healing,’” Bruce Sr. says, recalling his surprise.

“He lost his position playing quarterback because he couldn’t really throw. He had a cast on his arm and had to heal so he asked me how to play wide receiver, so I developed my own little techniques with him.”

In their practice sessions, the elder Mapp would have his son stand with his arms around a stop sign and catch balls while only being able to use his hands to reel in the passes. He’d throw him 30 or 40 passes a day and about 100 the night before a game, teaching him to always trust his hands.

Back at home, meanwhile, they’d watch film of old NFL wide receivers like Raymond Berry. If Mapp wanted to be a receiver, his father would do everything he could to help him on that path, signing him up for every camp in the area.

As a junior playing for a stacked high school team that would win a state championship, though, Mapp wasn’t drawing much attention from college programs. Houston Texans rookie receiver Jaelen Strong was a senior on that team and as his dad recalled, Mapp maybe had three passes thrown to him that season.

“So really he had no film,” Bruce Sr. says. “We recognized that’s a crucial year for a high school student to be recognized by any college. So he was under the radar.”

After his team got off to a slow start his senior year while leaning on the rushing game, Mapp finally started to break out. Even still, he attracted only one early offer – from Stony Brook – and when he didn’t accept quickly enough, they moved on and gave that spot to someone else.

Fate would work things out, though.

His former high school teammate Dom DiGalbo, who had transferred to another high school that season, was coming back from a visit to Coastal Carolina, where he’d later commit as an offensive lineman, and told Mapp that then-Chants recruiting coordinator Mike Gallagher was still looking for a receiver.

“Bruce called Coach Gallagher and he said, ‘Let me see your tape,’” Bruce Sr. remembers. “We sent him his tape and he called back about an hour later and asked me, ‘When can we get him down here?’ I said, ‘He can be down there this weekend.’”

A week later, Chants head coach Joe Moglia called to offer a scholarship and Mapp quickly accepted, becoming one of the new coaching staff’s first big-time recruits – and making that abundantly clear from the time he arrived on campus.

“A lot of people say they can’t believe he’s not playing at a higher level, but a lot of times you fall under the radar. And like I tell him, God puts you where he wants you to be,” Bruce Sr. says. “And I couldn’t be happier. I’m glad he’s down there because he’s learning, growing and developing. Every kid has the dream of playing [in the NFL], and I told him if you’re good they will find you.”

Lofty goals

Mapp still talks often to former Coastal Carolina star receiver Matt Hazel – who had previously set the program’s single-season receptions mark at 70 in 2013 – and was in Charlotte last weekend to watch Hazel catch a touchdown pass for the Miami Dolphins in a NFL preseason game against the Panthers.

Mapp couldn’t get down to the lower level to talk to his friend, but he says they shared a wave and a smile from the field to the stands. They root for each other. Hazel is trying to earn a spot on the Dolphins’ roster and Mapp, well, he made his goals clear as soon as he stepped into his friend’s old role in the Chants’ offense last fall.

“He set the single-season [catches] record his senior year,” Mapp said. “I looked up to him and I told him I was going to beat it. And he told me, ‘Go do it.’ So that was real motivation for me.”

One down, a few more to go.

The Coastal Carolina record for receiving yards in a season is Jerome Simpson’s 1,077 from 2006, while the career marks stand at Hazel’s 183 catches and Simpson’s 2,720 yards (Simpson’s 44 career receiving touchdowns looks safe for now).

While Mapp says he really doesn’t spend much time thinking about all that, his dad does a good job of keeping him updated and, yeah, he’d like to leave his mark on the program.

“He just wants me to play hard every day, but he thinks about that,” Mapp said. “He’ll send me a text, ‘You’re only this much away from this record.’ Being with Coach Moglia, you really don’t think about that stuff. I’m a real team guy, but I do have things I want to accomplish as well.”

He pauses for a moment before sharing a couple of numbers he’s managed to remember on his own.

“I’ve got a record for you if you want it – 93 catches, 1,475 (yards),” he said. “That would be the all-time catches and yards.”

That would be a lot to accomplish in one season, but no harm in aiming high, right?

With star quarterback Alex Ross back for his senior year and the rest of the team’s skill position players returning as well, the Chants should again be one of the top offenses in the FCS.

And Patenaude will be the first to acknowledge he wants Mapp as involved as possible this fall.

“He stepped into the spotlight last year and we just continue to try to feature him, put him in different positions,” Patenaude said. “I think the more he can learn, the more that he can do in the offense, the more we can move him around, the better he’ll be.”

The Chants started using Mapp more out of the slot late last season to create mismatches against safeties and linebackers. Overall, Patenaude says the budding star can still improve as a route runner and better understand how defenses approach him to further maximize his potential.

It’s Mapp’s own drive to grow in all areas, though, that may be what encourages Patenaude the most – because not only is he chasing Hazel’s and Simpson’s records, he hoping to follow in their path.

“He wants to be the best that he can possibly be. Motivation for him is not an issue at all,” he said. “Most of the time you have to kick him out of the building. He’s always asking questions, watching other receivers, trying to learn what the quarterback is looking at. ...

“He wants to be a coach, so he came into my office during camp and at end of the summer, I’d be hanging around, and we’d talk for a half hour about protections or run game, stuff like that. He’s kind of a football junkie.”

Talk to his dad long enough, and it’s no mystery where he got that from.

Bruce Sr. came down to watch the first week of preseason camp and says he’s hoping to get to four Coastal Carolina games this year, but whether he’s in the stadium or back home, the elder Mapp will make sure he’s doing his part.

“Last year was last year. To build on last year, keep developing to get better, keep growing and try to be the best ,” Bruce Sr. said of his message to his son this fall. “We’ve been talking about that since he was little. We talk daily. We talk about what it takes for him to get ready because if he’s not working somebody else is working and working harder.”

It doesn’t seem like that is going to be any sort of problem, though.

This story was originally published August 27, 2015 at 7:47 PM with the headline "Chants’ Mapp right on track."