CCU Football Notebook: Henderson seizes FCS record

De’Angelo Henderson did his best in recent weeks to minimize the attention on his chase for a significant FCS record, reiterating several times that he didn’t want the spotlight on such an individual pursuit.

But once he set the mark Saturday in Coastal Carolina’s 23-20 win at Monmouth, he admitted that, yes, the feat meant a lot to him.

Henderson took a pitch to the right on a fourth down play midway through the second quarter and raced into the end zone for a 2-yard score, making him the first player in NCAA FCS history to score a touchdown in 21 straight games.

He passed former Monmouth running back David Sinisi, who set the previous mark at 20 straight games from 2006-07 and who happened to be in attendance for the Hawks’ homecoming game Saturday.

“To God be the glory. To accomplish a milestone like that, it’s one of the greatest feelings I’ve ever had,” Henderson said. “It’s a personal thing so I try not to worry about it too much because I want us overall to do good, but to reach that milestone, it’s big. For me, my family, my hometown back in Summerville, those guys who got me to this point. It’s big. I thank everybody who got me here.”

The Coastal Carolina coaches had said this week they wouldn’t deviate from the game plan to ensure Henderson got that record-setting touchdown, but after the Chanticleers set up a first-and-goal from the Monmouth 9 in the second quarter, they gave Henderson four cracks at the end zone.

When he broke through on fourth down, outrunning the defense to the right edge, he held the ball in the air with his right arm while putting himself in the record book.

Sinisi, who like Henderson was listed at 5-foot-8, 205 pounds while piling up yards and touchdowns for Monmouth from 2006-08, is now a police officer in the Township of Mahwah in Bergen County, N.J.

He greeted Henderson on the field after the game and congratulated him on surpassing his mark.

“He’s a good guy. We talked about setting the bar higher for the next person to break and he just congratulated me,” Henderson said. “He said he didn’t want us to win and he didn’t want me in the end zone, but we laughed about it after.”

Israel bounces back big

Senior wide receiver John Israel had an eventful day Saturday, but ultimately he made a strong impact in helping Coastal Carolina move to 7-0 overall and 2-0 in the Big South.

With the Chants protecting a 17-13 lead early in the third quarter, senior quarterback Alex Ross threw a strike to Israel for what would have been a nice gain on third-and-4, but Israel dropped the ball to stall the drive.

He didn’t let the miscue linger long, though.

On Coastal Carolina’s next series, Israel hauled in a 26-yard pickup to move the Chants across midfield and set up an eventual field goal. And his biggest contribution was yet to come.

With the game tied 20-20 during Coastal Carolina’s final drive of the fourth quarter, the Chants were facing a pivotal third-and-11 from the Monmouth 44. Israel got himself wide open on a comeback route to the right, though, and Ross delivered a perfect pass for a 17-yard pick-up that helped set up an eventual game-winning 30-yard Ryan Granger field goal.

“They were giving us the same look every single [play],” Ross said of the big third-down conversion. “They were blitzing from the field and they were leaving the backside one-on-one. They tried to drop linebackers under it, but they weren’t doing a great job of really dropping under the comebacks so I knew I had John out there, I knew he was going to beat them one-on-one and he did and I put it to him.”

Overall, Israel shook off that big drop to finish with five catches for 70 yards in the win.

“Right after the drop I looked down on myself and then I had Ross come help me, Tyrell [Blanks], Bruce [Mapp], Hop [Henderson], everybody came around me and motivated me and told me, ‘Let it go, don’t think about it,’” Israel said. “So I did that and I got in my own head and said, ‘I can’t drop another, I can’t drop another.’ And then I just stopped thinking about it and the game started coming back to me.”

All three of Coastal Carolina’s starting wide receivers had nice games Saturday as Mapp finished with six catches for 79 yards and Blanks tallied five catches for 84 yards.

Offense still quiet

While the Chants won in the end, it was not quite the complete game they were looking for coming out of their bye week.

The defense continues to be plagued by big plays, but the unit again managed to execute a bend-don’t-break performance that was enough to give the team a chance to win.

Speaking after the game, head coach Joe Moglia was not ready to offer a full analysis of what went wrong in allowing Monmouth to pile up 475 yards and running back Lavon Chaney to rush for a career-best 196 yards and two touchdowns.

“I’ve got to look at film, so I’m not sure yet,” he said.

Offensively, meanwhile, the Chants put up some nice individual stat lines, but they scored a season low 23 points after totaling just 24 in their last game. And they totaled just 389 yards, putting up their second-lowest output of the season.

This after players and coaches expressed a lot of optimism that coming off the bye week the offense was ready to take off over the second half of the season.

“[Monmouth] did the same thing they did against Liberty. They tried to blitz us off the edges, they did a good job of containing the edge and not letting us get the ball outside like we’re used to. They made us run it up the middle, but credit to them,” Ross said. “They did a good job, they had a good plan, but this team found a way to win in the end.”

Said Henderson: “We’ve got to do a better job of executing on offense. The defense, they’ve been doing a great job all season of keeping us in and winning games for us, but offensively we’ve got to do better.”

Nonetheless, he still believes that offensive breakout is coming.

“It’s coming,” he said. “I don’t know when, but it’s coming.”

This story was originally published October 25, 2015 at 11:11 AM with the headline "CCU Football Notebook: Henderson seizes FCS record."