Coastal Carolina and its stars lived up to the hype in the season opener against Citadel
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College Football Week 1
Scores, highlights analysis from around NC and SC this week
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Coastal Carolina lived up to the hype as the No. 22 team in the AP Top 25 Poll in its season opener, and Coastal’s stars played like stars in a 52-14 win over Citadel on Thursday night at Brooks Stadium.
Reigning and preseason Sun Belt Conference Player of the Year Grayson McCall was precise in the six possessions he led before heading to the bench early in the third quarter with the rest of the Chanticleers starters.
He was 16 of 19 for 262 yards and a touchdown, and gained 24 yards on just two carries as the Chants coaching staff had little reason to expose him to unnecessary hits.
“Obviously you want to have him for a 14-game season, so we’re going to try to be smart with him,” CCU head coach Jamey Chadwell said. “If we have to run him to win the game, then we’re going to run him to win the game. I don’t want to take that away from him. But also I think you’ve got to be smart as a coach. If it’s not necessary then don’t do it, try to put him and our offense in situations where he can use his mind and use his arm and not have to use his legs.
“But he’s going to scramble and do those things naturally during the game, but . . . we went into the game saying we weren’t going to call anything specific where he had to run the ball.”
McCall’s top target in 2020, wide receiver Jaivon Heiligh, recorded his third consecutive 100-yard receiving game with six receptions for 133 yards and a TD.
Tight end and All-America candidate Isaiah Likely had five receptions for 64 yards and showed his athleticism at 6-foot-4, 240 pounds by leaping over a defender and continuing downfield following a catch.
Shermari Jones and Reese White, who will be carrying much of the load in the backfield this season after the departure of Chicago Bears signee C.J. Marable, combined for 162 yards and four touchdowns on 16 carries.
Defensively, 2020 Associated Press Third Team All-American C.J. Brewer recorded a team-high nine tackles at his defensive tackle position.
Citadel coach Brent Thompson, whose team has played Alabama and Clemson in recent years, said after the game that Coastal was the best Group of Five team he’s seen “in quite some time.”
Domination is in the numbers
Coastal scored on its first seven possessions, with six touchdowns and an abbreviated drive that ended in a field goal on the final play of the first half.
Following its first drive of the second half, Coastal was outgaining the Bulldogs 454-84.
Coastal’s defense had five tackles for loss in the first half against Citadel’s flexbone rushing attack including a combined 3.5 by linebacker Enock Makonzo and defensive end Jeffrey Gunter.
Coastal amassed 610 yards of offense and averaged 11 yards per play compared to the Bulldogs’ 237 yards and 4 yards per play.
Thursday’s attendance of 16,236 is the second most in the history of Brooks Stadium, and the school’s students were out in full force.
“It was loud when we came out. It was an awesome crowd,” Chadwell said. “I thought they were into it, they were involved. I thought our student section was great. They were loud, they were chanting, I think they were throwing stuff. I think somebody hit me with something. That’s the college experience. As a student you want to be able to come to a home game and it be packed out and your team is playing well and you can experience that.”
Impressive first impressions
Redshirt junior Travis Geiger, who beat out incumbent Jerrod Clark for the starting nose tackle job, got off to a fast start with three total tackles on Citadel’s first drive that totaled seven plays. He finished the game with eight total tackles, which was second on the team.
“I’ve always been the kind of guy that I have to make the most out of any opportunity, honestly that’s how I got the starting position,” Geiger said. “. . . It means a lot [to be the starter], I’m grateful to have it, but I don’t put myself higher than the second guy or I don’t think I’m better than him, I just know that you just have to do your job day in and day out at 100 percent.”
CCU had just four new starters from last season. In addition to Geiger and Jones/White, redshirt freshman defensive end Braylon Ryan recorded four tackles, including two solo, while battling leg cramps, and super senior receiver Kameron Brown had one catch for 17 yards.
Redshirt freshman Braydon Bennett of Greenville actually got the start along with Jones in the backfield and gained 23 yards on an option pitch on CCU’s first offensive play. He finished with five carries for 49 yards and a score and three receptions for 33 yards.
The son of former South Carolina Gamecock running back Brandon Bennett, the 6-2, 190-pound back was a national 110-meter hurdle champion in high school and is the reigning Sun Belt Conference 110-meter hurdle champ.
“We got him out of the gate there and we almost had a touchdown on the first play,” Chadwell said. “He’s somebody we want to get the ball to. . . . We tried to get it to him in numerous ways. He’s somebody that we think has home run potential. He can run, he can do some things and he’s still growing into his body. Sometimes he looks like Gumby out there, but he’s going to be really good.”
Finding a negative
Chadwell was pleased with just about everything he saw from his team Thursday, with the exception of a pair of undisciplined 15-yard penalties for unsportsmanlike conduct during celebrations following touchdowns.
Jones took his helmet off on the field to celebrate a White touchdown to draw a flag, and a few players ran off the bench to celebrate redshirt junior tight end Xavier Gravette’s first touchdown at CCU after his transfer in the offseason from Morgan State.
“I’m a little disappointed that we had some penalties, some celebrations, some things there that are not what we want to be about from a conduct standpoint,” Chadwell said. “I know we want to celebrate and have fun, but you’ve got to know when to have fun on the sideline, not the end zone.”
CCU, the least penalized team in the country last season with 3.67 penalties per game, had just two penalties for 10 yards aside from the celebration faux pas.
Quotable
“I hope our community, our students, our faculty, our staff, everybody in the Conway area, I hope we can continue this [attendance]. We’re on national television Friday and the first Power Five opponent in the history of our university is coming to here to play us, so it would be awesome if we could get 20,000 people here. That would be huge for our team, that would be huge for recruiting, that would be huge for our university to have everybody see that on TV.” — Chadwell.
“Where I was impressed tonight with [McCall], they gave us some different looks, they did a lot of different things. We put a little bit more on him in the game plan than we probably did all of last year, and he handled that pretty well. I think that shows his maturity. He loves to play, loves to compete.” — Chadwell
“We still feel like a lot of people think last season was a fluke and it just happened because of COVID, and we cheated on COVID tests, or a lot of [doubters] out there, and it really just pushes us. Every time we hear that or anytime we hear anything negative about us, it’s like, ‘Okay, well lets go show them.’ I love it.” — Geiger
“I really think the success we had last year actually motivated us to work harder in the offseason and get better because now we know the places that we can go. Some of our coaches were worried about complacency off last season and post bowl game and stuff like that, but I didn’t really see it at all. We came to work every day.” — McCall
Poll implications
CCU entered the game ranked 22nd in the AP poll and 24th in the USA Today Coaches Poll, and will have a chance to move up slightly depending on what other teams do this weekend.
Up next
Coastal will host Kansas at 7:30 p.m. next Friday night, as the first program from a Power Five conference will visit Brooks Stadium.
The Chants will be looking for their third consecutive win over the Jayhawks of the Big 12, as they defeated them on the road 12-7 in 2019 and 38-23 last season after racing out to a 28-0 lead.
This story was originally published September 2, 2021 at 10:10 PM with the headline "Coastal Carolina and its stars lived up to the hype in the season opener against Citadel."
