MYRTLE BEACH -- Coastal Carolina players, coaches and supporters packed into the back room at Logan's Roadhouse on Sunday morning to learn where the team's improbable run to the FCS football playoffs would take them next.
The answer was just the latest surprise of the weekend.
After closing the regular season with four straight wins to finish 6-5, the Chanticleers are not only in the playoffs for the second time in program history but they will host their first-round game against Western Illinois at 1 p.m. Saturday inside Brooks Stadium.
"It's just awesome to be at home. What a blessing," CCU coach David Bennett said. "What a true blessing to be able to play in Brooks Stadium, on Benton Field for a playoff game for a team that was 1-4, 2-5. That's just a blessing."
The Chants didn't have to wait long to learn their fate. The standing-room-only crowd at Logan's applauded when Coastal Carolina was shown on ESPNU's selection show broadcast as one of the 10 automatic qualifiers into the 20-team FCS playoff field. And they started cheering again moments later when CCU's matchup with Western Illinois was the first unveiled on the bracket.
A day after thumping visiting Charleston Southern, 70-3, and getting the necessary help with Liberty's 54-28 win over Stony Brook to claim a share of the Big South championship as well as the tiebreaker for the league's automatic playoff bid, the Chants were still trying to make sense of everything that transpired over the weekend.
"I'm pretty shocked right now," senior running back Eric O'Neal said. "Who would have thought that Coastal Carolina would be in the playoffs?"
"There's not even words to describe how crazy this is," senior receiver Brandon Whitley said. "To start out 1-4, everybody counted us out. To be able to come back and then get a home playoff game, that's crazy."
Tickets, ranging in price from $6 to $20, go on sale at 9 a.m. this morning through Coastal Carolina's ticket office, and season-ticket holders who place their order by the close of business today will be guaranteed their same seats.
"I hope it will be packed," Bennett said. "Get your tickets now - that needs to be your headline. Get your tickets now. One of our neighbors said he had a vision one day that at Coastal Carolina they'd be scalping tickets. I hope that day is Saturday."
CCU athletic director Hunter Yurachek said potential playoff teams wishing to host a first-round game had to submit bids of at least $30,000 to the NCAA by the end of the night Nov. 12. That was the day before Coastal Carolina upset Big South favorite Liberty, 45-31, at home.
"The minimum bid to host was $30,000. We were a little bit above the minimum bid," Yurachek said. "We thought it was competitive for the first-round game."
After having a number of empty seats for each of the last two home games, CCU is hoping to fill Brooks Stadium for the first home playoff game in program history. Yurachek said there is ongoing talk about possibly opening the residence halls Saturday so the university's students, who are off this week for Thanksgiving break, will be able to come back for the game.
"We want it to be a dynamic atmosphere," Yurachek said.
"We've got a chance to bring some of our fans back and get to show them what we're really made of," senior receiver Marquel Willis said. "We've been playing a lot better these last couple weeks."
The Chants were 1-4 after the non-conference portion of their schedule and then 2-5 after losing at home to Stony Brook on Oct. 23. Then they reeled of four straight victories - each one more impressive than the one before it.
Entering play Saturday, Coastal Carolina needed to defeat Charleston Southern and to hold the Buccaneers to as few points as possible because in the event of a three-way tie atop the Big South standings, the league's playoff bid would go to the team that had allowed the fewest points in conference play.
To get a piece of that three-way tie, the Chants needed Liberty to defeat Stony Brook while also scoring at least 42 points to swing the tiebreaker to CCU.
"That we're here right now after starting 1-4 is a blessing," Willis said. "We couldn't have done it without a lot of help, but we got it done. I don't know how we did it, but we got it done."
This is the first time the Big South has had an automatic bid as the FCS playoffs expanded from 16 to 20 teams this year. CCU, which earned an at-large playoff berth in 2006, remains the only team to make the playoffs from the conference.
The Chants' reward this time is a first-round matchup with a 7-4 Western Illinois team that finished second to Northern Iowa in the Missouri Valley Conference. The Leathernecks went 3-3 over their final six games, but they closed with a 30-14 win over Northern Iowa and boast one of the country's top offenses.
Western Illinois ranks second among FCS teams with an average of 484.36 offensive yards per game and is also among the national scoring leaders at 35.6 points per game.
The Leathernecks are led by senior quarterback Matt Barr, who ranks fifth among FCS players with 3,079 passing yards to go with 26 touchdowns and five interceptions. He has also rushed for 407 yards and five touchdowns.
Meanwhile, sophomore Caulton Ray (899 rushing yards, eight touchdowns) and freshman Bryce Flowers (744-8) form a productive rushing duo, while senior Lito Senatus is among the nation's top FCS receivers with 60 catches for 1,067 yards and 13 touchdowns.
"I was just happy to get in," senior offensive lineman Seth Smalls said. "I was ready to play whoever."
The winner of the game Saturday will advance to play top-seeded Appalachian State.
Riding a four-game winning streak, coming off the most lopsided win in program history and now in a position few could have predicted for the Chants, they'll see just how long they can keep this run going.
"We've been given a second chance at life," Willis said, "and we feel like we have to take advantage of it now."
This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php
Five Filters featured article: Beyond Hiroshima - The Non-Reporting of Falluja's Cancer Catastrophe.
No comments:
Post a Comment