CCU Football Notebook: Ross looking OK after tweaking injured ankle

Coastal Carolina football coach Joe Moglia admitted afterward Saturday night that he didn’t think senior quarterback Alex Ross would return to the game after reinjuring his ankle late in the third quarter.

Ross was down on the field for a couple minutes and hobbled to the sideline with help before being replaced at the end of the promising drive by backup Michael Church.

But sure enough, Ross returned for the Chanticleers’ next series and helped lead a touchdown drive, even taking off for a clutch 9-yard run on third-and-6 to keep the drive going.

He seemed to be walking around fine at practice Sunday and is not expected to have any limitations for the Chants’ game this coming Saturday against Gardner-Webb.

“My heart stopped there for a couple minutes, but he’s a tough kid,” Chants offensive coordinator Dave Patenaude said. “He’s never going to really tell you how bad he’s hurting, but he’s walking around fine today. I don’t think it’s as bad as he was earlier in the season.

“The encouraging thing for him up until that happened, and really even after that, he took off and made some plays running the ball, which has been a piece that’s been really missing from our offense.”

Ross finished 28-of-46 passing for 274 yards and rushed for 50 yards and a touchdown in the win.

He tweaked the ankle, which has bothered him for most of the season, when he rolled out to extend a play and get a pass off before being tackled around the base of his legs.

As he explained after the game Saturday night, “He wrapped me up by my legs, he tweaked it a little bit, he had a few words for me, but that’s football.”

On the sideline, meanwhile, nobody knew how serious it was, but it looks like the injury is far better than perhaps at first feared.

“You never know how serious it is, but I assumed when he came out, he was out,” Moglia said. “So when he came back for the rest of the game I was surprised. He wasn’t as sharp as he was the first half, his ankle is not as good as it was three or four days ago, but [still] better than it was maybe two weeks ago, three weeks ago.”

Meanwhile, the Chants were without two starting receivers Saturday night as senior John Israel (knee) was ruled out as a game-time decision and senior slot receiver Tyrell Blanks (concussion) did not make the trip.

“Israel was working out today. I didn’t exactly see him. We’ll know more about him by Wednesday,” Patenaude said. “I anticipate he’ll be able to play. I don’t know on Tyrell.”

Defensively, redshirt-freshman reserve defensive tackle Ja’ree Tolbert is set to get an MRI on his knee.

Thoughts on the defense

Carlin said the difference Saturday night between the first and second half was simply execution on third down, and the Chants’ struggles in that regard early in the game were the most frustrating part for him.

Charleston Southern was 8-for-8 on third downs in the first half while piling up 313 yards before halftime and jumping out to a 27-15 lead. After halftime, the Bucs were 1-of-6 on third down and managed just two field goals.

“I go in at halftime, I’d like to think I’m pretty even-keeled,” Carlin said. “I told them, ‘Here’s where we need to do better.’ And third down was one of those things. The angles we were taking to the ball weren’t great, but I told them, ‘Guys, we need to do better on third down. You have them where you want them at third-and-7, third-and-8.’ We just busted some [coverages].”

Said Moglia: “I was disappointed. ... Their third-down situations when we were on defense and we’d have good pressure and they’d have guys wide open, we practiced all of those. So in every case there was some individual breakdown. When they out-executed us on a couple of plays, I’m OK with that, but I’m not OK with those breakdowns.”

Defensively, the Chants continue to tweak the balance of snaps given to their personnel and junior cornerback Samson Baldwin, senior linebacker Rayshauld Shields, sophomore linebacker Shane Johnson and sophomore cornerback Ray Lewis III were among the players who saw more opportunity Saturday.

No surprise on offense

Even though Charleston Southern came into the game Saturday ranked as the No. 1 defense in the FCS while holding opponents to an average of 218.1 yards per game, Patenaude said he wasn’t surprised that the Chants were able to move the ball successfully.

Coastal Carolina totaled 426 yards, which is 52 more than any other team has managed against the Bucs this season.

“I didn’t think going in, they certainly weren’t the best team in the country defensively. They just hadn’t played anybody that was any good offensively,” Patenaude said. “It’s a combination of both. They did a good job, they’re well coached and they did exactly what we thought they were going to do, but I didn’t think personnel-wise they were North Dakota State or Montana or anybody so I expected to be able to move the ball.”

As for the Chants’ final offensive play, after they had moved all the way to the Bucs’ 8 in the final minute while trying to tie the game, Patenaude said he made the fourth-down play call – a pass to the left side of the end zone to junior Bruce Mapp – after seeing how the defense aligned.

“That’s a staple play for us. It’s a play that’s a man [coverage] beater in the red zone,” he said. “We had a different play called. We were going to try to run a little pick play and saw that they had a safety back there. We knew the look that we were going to get so we burned a timeout, they came out in the same look, we had the one-on-one, Bruce had the kid beat and it just wasn’t a very good ball.”

Costly penalty

Before that final drive, the Chants had another chance to try to tie the game after recovering an onside kick at their own 46.

But on the first play of the series, they were flagged for a 15-yard unsportsmanlike conduct penalty and ended up going three-and-out.

Patenaude explained what happened on that penalty.

“The guy was laying on top of Alex giving him the business and [center] Dom DiGalbo basically yanked him off the pile. When he yanked him off the pile the kid kind of flew back and the official was right there and he ended up right at the official’s feet so they called him for a personal foul,” he said. “It wasn’t a blatant personal foul. It was kind of, ‘Hey, get off my guy.’ He was probably a little too animated in how he did it, so we got flagged for it. But really that drive, we miss a huge third-and-long throw, it was a pretty good throw and it went right through Bruce’s hands. All said, if we could have converted that throw we would have been inside the 40.”

This story was originally published November 1, 2015 at 8:42 PM with the headline "CCU Football Notebook: Ross looking OK after tweaking injured ankle."