Coming off a strong win against Air Force and a close, hard-fought victory over a tough team from Holy Cross, your Army Black Knights look to close out their home schedule with a potential third-straight victory over the Coastal Carolina Chanticleers.
Army most likely can’t make it to a bowl game this year. Still, this is a critically important contest. With a win, the Black Knights could set themselves up to rewrite their season’s narrative and potentially get back to .500 with a win at Army-Navy. More than that, the team needs to continue to improve week-to-week with both their new offense and their rushing defense, and they need to build momentum heading into the biggest game of the year. Finally, it will be Senior Day at West Point, meaning that this is the Class of 2024’s last chance to get a home win in front of their families at Michie Stadium.
Ready to honor our Firsties on Saturday!#GoArmy pic.twitter.com/4u4EOk9PRh
— Army Football (@ArmyWP_Football) November 13, 2023
Coastal Carolina
Coastal Carolina got off to kind of a rough start this season, but they’ve since rebounded by winning five straight. Following a bad loss to Georgia State and another loss to Georgia Southern, Coastal started their current winning streaking by beating App. State on the road for the first time ever, 27-24. They then beat a bad Arkansas State team, followed by good teams from Marshall, Old Dominion, and Texas State. That made five wins in a row and made them 7-3, 5-2 in the Sun Belt-East.
Overall, Coastal finds itself in a similar position to the Black Knights. This is an out-of-conference road contest that comes a week before their big, season-ending match-up with would-be conference leader James Madison. JMU can’t go to the Sun Belt Championship due to NCAA rules for teams just coming up from the FCS level of college football, but neither can Coastal afford another loss to a conference rival. Such a loss would make the Chants 5-3 in the conference, potentially sending App. State to the conference championship game over CCU.
At one level, then, this weekend’s game could become a trap game for Coastal. However, that seems unlikely given that most Coastal fans seemed to think last year’s contest would prove something about the state of their program against the national college football landscape.
Offense
The Chants lost QB Grayson McCall following a gruesome head injury late in their game at Arkansas State. Ironically, that forced them back to their power-running roots, and the entire team has played markedly better ever since. Backup QB Jarrett Guest got the start against Marshall the next week and helped his team vaporize the Thundering Herd, 34-6. Since then, though, the team has turned to freshman QB Ethan Vasko.
Vasko’s play has been largely reminiscent of McCall’s early play for the Chants. Vasko has gone 35/60 passing (58.3%) for 326 yards, 3 touchdowns, 1 interception, and 3 sacks in just 2 game’s worth of work. More importantly, he’s led the Chants back to an option-based rushing attack that has put up 466 ruhsing yards and 5 rushing touchdowns in just the last two games on a whopping 89 carries (5.2 yards/carry). Vasko himself has 37 carries for 273 yards (7.5 yards/carry) plus a rushing touchdown over that same time period. He’s become the team’s second-leading rusher after just two games!
More to the point, the Chants are now spreading the ball around a lot on offense. Six guys carried the ball against ODU. Eight carried it against Texas State. In both games, CCU averaged fully 34 minutes time-of-possession.
Army fans might find that style of play familiar.
With that in mind, this game might look a bit like a service academy match-up in terms of how CCU will attempt to run the ball. Unfortunately, CCU has gotten better quarterback play through the air than any of the service academies tend to get and has therefore been much better at taking advantage of single-coverage match-ups down the field.
BIG TIME play by Jabari Moore helped seal the victory! pic.twitter.com/2xQw1zkhBa
— Army Football (@ArmyWP_Football) November 11, 2023
Defense
Coastal has a solid rushing defense, seemingly based on the play of their defensive line and their safeties’ ability to come up in run support. Overall, the team is 68th in the country in rushing defense, having allowed 150 rushing yards/game on 4.4 yards/carry. However, they’ve allowed just *8* rushing touchdowns this season.
S Clayton Isbell leads the team in tackles with 63, 39 solo, plus 1 sack, 5 passes defensed, and 3 interceptions. DE Michael Mason comes second with 59 tackles, 22 solo, plus 4.5 sacks, 1 forced fumble, and a fumble recovery. LBs JT Killen and Shane Bruce are the fourth and fifth leading tacklers, respectively. Both guys have 43 tackles with 14 or 15 solo tackles, and both guys have an interception.
Friends, this is a talented, ball-hawking defense. They’ve got 12 total interceptions plus 7 forced fumbles with 6 fumble recoveries. On balance they’re 26th in the nation in turnover margin at +5 overall.
With all of that said, we’ve seen Army successfully attack defenses like this, especially ones that are particularly dependent on D-Line play. However, the Black Knights will need to take care to hold onto the football this week, especially since they will probably have to put the ball in the air some late in this game.
Black Swarm 𝐀𝐓𝐄 🚫#BALLATTHEBEACH | #FAM1LY | #TEALNATION pic.twitter.com/6zoMQD8wao
— Coastal Football (@CoastalFootball) November 12, 2023
Special Teams
K Kade Hendley has been good from short range this season. He has gone 18/18 on extra points but just 9/12 on field goals with 2 misses from 30+ yards and a miss from 40+. Based on that, we probably won’t see him attempt anything longer than, say, a 35-yarder this weekend.
P Evan Crenshaw averages about 46 yards/punt, which is good. However, CCU gave up two longish punt returns last week to Texas State, one 17-yarder and one 16-yarder. Maybe Special Teams Coordinator Sean Saturnio can make something with that? We’ll see.
Our Call of the Week, presented by @USAA, is our first-quarter punt block TD in Saturday's win over Holy Cross. pic.twitter.com/RBlHX2KBDt
— Army Football (@ArmyWP_Football) November 14, 2023
Final Thoughts
Weather may matter in this game. The current forecast calls for showers early, followed by sun later in the day. The high should be somewhere around 50 degrees with maybe 10-15 mph of win.
It might get a little chilly out there for a team from Myrtle Beach.
The line on this game opened at Army (+5.5) but has slid to just (+4.5). We take that to mean that Grayson McCall probably won’t play this week, and indeed, why would he? It’s an out-of-conference contest with a must-win game next week. We shouldn’t expect to see McCall until Thanksgiving at the earliest. But anything is possible. After all, Holy Cross QB Matthew Sluka came back from injury for an out-of-conference road contest at Michie Stadium just this past week, and the Crusaders have just as much on the line down the stretch as Coastal does.
𝗔𝗹𝗹 👀 𝗼𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗻𝘁𝘀!
— Coastal Football (@CoastalFootball) November 13, 2023
We’re on ESPN2 for a 3:30 PM kickoff in the regular-season finale!
📰: https://t.co/IWn1UyxAqm#BALLATTHEBEACH | #FAM1LY | #TEALNATION pic.twitter.com/WeI0gqh4UW
As always, CBS Sports has coverage this weekend, starting at noon. The Black Knights, meanwhile, have a chance to get their season fully righted and headed in the right direction as they look toward Army-Navy and their eventual move into the American Athletic Conference.
A win this weekend would mean a Hell of a lot.
Go Army! Beat Coastal Carolina!!!
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