This weekend is family weekend at Appalachian State, and the Mountaineers drew a crowd of more than 30,000 to Kidd Brewer Stadium for their 37-29 win over Coastal Carolina on Saturday.
The crowd was loud throughout, the band performed “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” in its three-song set at halftime, and the spectators dressed in black and gold celebrated a win for the 16th time in the past 19 home games.
The setting in the North Carolina mountains gives App State a true home field advantage, and Saturday it gave Coastal players and coaches a taste of what CCU would eventually like to soon become in college football.
“They’re obviously the cream of the crop in the Sun Belt [Conference],” CCU interim head coach Jamey Chadwell said. “They’ve obviously got great tradition. They know how to do a game day. And there is no doubt in my mind that if we continue making the strides we are we will be there, sooner rather than later.
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“We feel we can be here, be the top of the Sun Belt, if we continue to make the strides and build the foundation we want. That’s what we want to be.”
We’ve made a lot of strides over the last six weeks. Obviously nothing to show for it, but our program is making huge strides to where when we get our foundation right we have a chance to be a really special place. I think today might be what we need hopefully to start putting that thing in place.
CCU interim head coach Jamey Chadwell
Appalachian State won three Football Championship Subdivision national titles from 2005-07 before moving up to the Football Bowl Subdivision level in 2014 and quickly becoming a team to beat in the Sun Belt.
Coastal fell to 0-4 against Appalachian State, with all of the losses coming at Kidd Brewer Stadium and all but Saturday’s loss by 17 points or more.
“I’ve been told all week we’ve been here three times and it hasn’t been close,” Chadwell said. “We don’t worry about past teams we worry about our own team. We were bound and determined to come out and play for all four quarters no matter what the situation was.”
“That’s what we talked about all week was don’t let the atmosphere and environment beat you. Don’t let the three national championships beat you. If they’re going to beat us let them beat us, and our kids kept playing and I was proud of that.”
The atmosphere at the stadium likely contributed to Coastal’s quick 14-0 deficit in the game’s opening five minutes, and it was certainly a factor when the Chants took a pair of false start penalties after driving to the ASU 22 in the second quarter and settling for an Evan Rabon kicked a 49-yard field goal.
“This is something anyone that plays college football wants to play in,” CCU senior quarterback Tyler Keane said. “This atmosphere was second to none. Obviously it’s the loudest crowd we’ve played in front of. It got into us a little bit at the end of the first half, we had a couple false starts when the crowd got really loud.”
Wielding weapons
Coastal Carolina is building an arsenal at wide receiver.
Junior Malcolm Williams set CCU’s single-game receiving yards mark three weeks ago at Louisiana-Monroe, junior Omar Black led the team in receiving in each of the past two games, and Saturday it was sophomore Ky’Jon Tyler’s time to have a career day.
Tyler had five receptions for 141 yards including a 73-yard touchdown, and the Chants nearly had two receivers reach 100 yards receiving as senior Chris Jones had four receptions for 96 yards. Four players had receptions of at least 20 yards.
“They brought some blitzes and put them into some man coverage and we were able to complete a pass and maybe miss a tackle, and the receivers did a great job of running after the catch,” said Keane, who completed 17 of 29 passes for a career-high 332 yards and two touchdowns.
The Chants made several of their biggest pass plays to convert third downs, helping them go 5 for 12 on third downs.
“Coach Chadwell had a good gameplan going into the game,” Keane said. “We had a good idea what they were going to do on third down and we executed on those plays.”
Playing keep away
Coastal did not force a turnover for the fourth time in the past five games.
The lack of turnovers is generally forcing the offense to put together long drives in order to score, and is confounding for the Chants, especially considering the turnover production last season.
In defensive coordinator Mickey Matthews’ first season at CCU, the Chants created 29 turnovers with 21 interceptions and eight fumble recoveries, and scored nine defensive touchdowns to rank second in Division I behind Alabama.
Through the first two games of the season Coastal had forced a turnover in 15 consecutive games.
“Scheme-wise last year we played a lot more zone and this year we’re playing a lot more man,” linebacker Shane Johnson said. “We feel our corners can cover a lot better than previous years. . . That’s one of the reasons why we don’t have people spying underneath in coverages.
“In previous year’s we’d have people spying under the coverages and we played man also, we’d mix it up a little bit. Our corners and DBs are going for [pass break ups] right now instead of looking for the ball a lot more. I feel like previous years we were playing off the quarterback.”
Recruit pursuit
Prior to Coastal Carolina’s move into the Sun Belt this year, Appalachian State was the only Carolinas school in the now 12-team southeastern conference that also includes schools from Texas, Arkansas, Alabama, Louisiana and Georgia. Football-only schools Idaho and New Mexico State are leaving the conference after this season.
That makes ASU, along with Georgia State in Atlanta and Georgia Southern in Statesboro, perhaps the three conference programs that compete the most with the Chants for recruits in their most fertile recruiting grounds in the Carolinas and Georgia.
A victory Saturday would have been ideal for CCU in the short-term recruiting battle, but Coastal being competitive as a big underdog may have served a purpose as well, showing the program may be headed in the right direction.
“The places they recruit we are, so you’re going to go head to head with them sometimes,” Chadwell said of ASU. “Any time you’re battling a neighbor state and they’re coming in your backyard or you’re going in their backyard, any time a victory would help.”
“It would [have been] big for us to get a victory to show the people we’re recruiting that our program is going in the right direction. Even if we don’t and go up and play well and show what we’re capable of doing, I think that helps us going forward.
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