Chants back to work after first defeat

It was back to business Sunday evening for the Coastal Carolina football team, roughly 19 hours after sustaining its first loss of the season.

Standing behind the end zone watching intently as the Chanticleers worked on their array of two-point conversion plays, head coach Joe Moglia took a break to reflect on that 33-25 defeat at No. 19/24 Charleston Southern and relayed the message he delivered to the team earlier in the day.

“I said that, ‘We’ve been working hard for a long time as a team. When we had our bye week, we said we were really going to commit to trying to treat the second half of the season as something we really want to improve. I believe that everybody gave 100 percent the other night. We played against a good team and we lost,’” Moglia said.

“‘... But a really good team, a really good person always learns from their mistakes and this is a matter of that. Make sure you understand our mistakes, and two weeks from Thursday our regular season is over so we’ve got two weeks from Thursday [left] in the second half of the season to really improve and do what we need to do. We lost a game. Let’s go.’”

That’s not to say the sting of the defeat – the second time in three years that Coastal Carolina’s unbeaten start to the season ended at Charleston Southern – wasn’t still lingering.

After a rough first half in which the Buccaneers (7-1, 4-0 Big South) had their way offensively while piling up 313 yards and building a 27-15 lead, the Chants (7-1, 2-1) later went down 15 points early in the fourth quarter before nearly coming all the way back.

Junior running back De’Angelo Henderson scored on a 9-yard touchdown run with 9:03 remaining to make it a one-score game and Coastal Carolina then had two chances to tie.

The Chants’ final drive would go a program-record 19 plays and take them all the way to the Charleston Southern 8, but on fourth-and-4 senior quarterback Alex Ross’ final pass toward the left side of the end zone went off the fingers of junior Bruce Mapp as he tried to reach back to the pass.

With that, the Bucs took sole possession of first place in the Big South and control of the conference race, but Coastal Carolina’s hopes for a deep FCS playoff run remain regardless of how the league standings finish.

“It’s always disappointing [to lose], but you’ve got three left and you’ve still got the whole season to play for,” offensive coordinator Dave Patenaude said. “All of the things that you set out to do and dream about are still there, but you’ve got to win. ...

“We’re a pretty resilient group. We don’t like losing, we don’t lose much around here, so the guys are down a little bit, which is expected on a Sunday, but we’ll bounce back and be ready for those guys next week.”

Coastal Carolina’s final regular-season stretch begins with home games Saturday against Gardner-Webb, next week against Kennesaw State and then on the road on a Thursday night Nov. 19 at Liberty.

“Absolutely you’re down, but you’ve got another game. You can’t let them beat you twice,” defensive coordinator Clayton Carlin said. “You’ve got to get back out there, fix the things you’ve got to fix. We’re down, but we’ve got to focus on the positives as coach said, keep moving forward and attack. We’ve got about 17 days left in the regular season, so we’ve got to attack it with everything we have.”

The new FCS rankings will come out Monday and the Chants will surely lose their No. 1 spot in the FCS Coaches Poll.

As for rankings or potential postseason seeding scenarios, though, Moglia said all he and his team need to worry about is the next game.

“I’ve really given it no thought and I really don’t have interest in giving it thought,” Moglia said of the other stuff. “All we’ve got to do is take care of business. We’ve got to get ready for Gardner-Webb. We’ve got to come back from a defeat. That’s what we’ve got to do now.”

This story was originally published November 1, 2015 at 7:56 PM with the headline "Chants back to work after first defeat."