Chants hold off Paladins in another wild thriller

For a while it really did feel like Coastal Carolina’s season opener at Furman was going to follow an all-too-familiar script.

The teams’ last two meetings here in Paladin Stadium had resulted in a triple-overtime win for the Chanticleers in 2012 and a double-overtime win in 2014 – both much tighter than anyone in teal would have preferred – and one could only sense the game Saturday night was building toward another unpredictable finish on this field.

Furman, which had answered every Coastal Carolina surge throughout the evening, scored a touchdown and two-point conversion with 1:07 left in the fourth quarter to draw to within three points and make at least some people in the stadium wonder if it was going to happen yet again.

But this time the suspense was contained to regulation as the No. 5-ranked Chants recovered the ensuing onside kick and ran out the rest of the clock to finish off a 38-35 win.

“They’re a great team and we’ve got a great tradition and the rivalry against them is phenomenal,” senior quarterback Alex Ross said. “It always comes down to the wire, and that’s what happened here tonight.”

In his first game since separating his throwing shoulder last December in the playoffs at North Dakota State and needing surgery to repair his AC joint, Ross looked every bit like the Walter Payton Award candidate he is while completing 27-of-36 passes for 328 yards and two touchdowns.

There were a number of stars Saturday night, though.

Junior running back De’Angelo Henderson finished with seven catches for 129 yards and rushed 15 times for 95 yards and a touchdown. His 224 total yards ranks as the second-highest single-game total in program history behind Mike Tolbert’s 266 against VMI in 2007.

Junior Devin Brown added a 100-yard kickoff return for a touchdown, setting a Big South record with his fourth career touchdown return.

Meanwhile, seniors Kelvin Deveaux and Leroy Cummings notched interceptions for the defense.

And the Chants (1-0) needed every last contribution to start their quest for an FCS national championship off with a win.

“They always play us hard for some reason, but we prevailed through,” Cummings said.

Eventually, but again, the whole game felt eerily similar to those last two meetings here between the teams.

The Chants started strong while scoring touchdowns on their first three possessions – including Brown’s dazzling kickoff return – to build a 21-7 lead, but Furman (0-1) had the game tied by halftime.

Then in the third quarter, the Chants again looked like they had taken some control of this one … before losing almost all of that lead too.

They had opened the second half by stuffing Furman’s Ernie Cain – who would finish with 61 rushing yards and three touchdowns – on third-and-1 to force a quick punt.

And on the next play, Ross hit Henderson with a quick pass that became a 60-yard gain as the elusive force better known as “Hop” raced down the left sideline before cutting across the field and eventually finishing by the right sideline all the way down to the Furman 12. Three plays later, sophomore Osharmar Abercrombie scored on a 2-yard touchdown run to put Coastal Carolina up 28-21.

Later in the third quarter, the Chants’ defense – which had a rough night overall in giving up 525 yards of total offense – came up big again. Furman had driven deep into Coastal Carolina territory before stalling and facing a third-and-13 from the 32, and Deveaux intercepted Reese Hannon’s lob toward the end zone as the Paladins came away empty handed.

It looked like the Chants were poised for a pivotal swing in the game as they drove all the way to the Furman 6, but on fourth-and-3 head coach Joe Moglia elected to go for the end zone and instead came away with nothing. After lining up in an irregular formation with the line separated in the middle, Coastal Carolina repositioned and sent a direct snap to senior running back Andre Johnson, who bobbled the ball before being taken down quickly.

That could have been costly as Furman answered with a touchdown drive with Hannon hitting Andrej Suttles on a 33-yard strike with 12:09 to play. The Paladins couldn’t hang onto the snap on the potential game-tying extra point, though, leaving Coastal Carolina in the lead 28-27.

“That was my call in terms of the fake – that was a mistake,” Moglia said. “That put a little pressure on us. I was delighted that they screwed up the extra point attempt. That gave us a little bit of a cushion.”

Indeed, the Chants would follow with a touchdown drive of their own, capped by a 24-yard pass from Ross to junior Bruce Mapp to make it 35-27.

Coastal Carolina then forced another turnover as Hannon had a pass bounce off tight end Duncan Fletcher and into the hands of Cummings at the Paladins’ 25.

And this time the visitors would settle for a 29-yard field goal from junior Ryan Granger to go up 38-27 with 4:36 remaining.

Of course, though, it wasn’t over just yet.

Hannon, who completed 27-of-41 passes and set Furman single-game records with 365 passing yards and 400 total offensive yards, led a late Paladins touchdown drive, hitting Jordan Snellings on a 9-yard scoring strike and a two-point conversion pass with 1:07 on the clock.

Henderson insisted the Chants weren’t thinking back to those two recent overtime games here.

“When we get in these situations, we never think about the past, we never think about what happened the game before or the year before, nothing like that,” he said. “We just think about going on the field, executing and trying to get touchdowns to win the game.”

But again, it only seemed fitting that the Paladins would have a chance to steal the game or force overtime again in the final minute.

Moglia admitted that he did have one specific memory creep into his mind after that final touchdown.

In the Chants’ 47-45 triple-overtime win at Furman back in 2012 – Moglia’s second game with the program – the Paladins recovered an onside kick with 1:57 remaining in the fourth quarter on their way to briefly taking the lead before the teams eventually headed to overtime.

“If you remember, my first season here in our second game, [it was] similar at the end and we didn’t get it – they were successful with their onside kick,” Moglia recalled after the game. “So that was in the back of my mind, but I was confident with the group we had out there.”

Sure enough, junior Alex Scearce recovered this onside kick for the Chants to finally seal it – another narrow win in what has been a thoroughly entertaining series between the schools that will likely conclude next season at Brooks Stadium

Maybe most encouraging, though, is that a Coastal Carolina team with three new starting offensive linemen, five new starters on the defense and numerous changes on special teams showed that they have the same late-game poise as the last few Chants teams.

“It’s big. You want to be able to do that as a football team. That’s critical,” Ross said. “It’s critical to be able to do that in big games and fortunately tonight we were able to pull that out and we were able to take a knee at the end of the game and run the clock out.”

And finally exhale.

This story was originally published September 5, 2015 at 10:37 PM with the headline "Chants hold off Paladins in another wild thriller."