Hey, y'all. Goldie Seabrook here, sandals on, because it is not November yet and I have principles. This week's Low Tide Notes come to you from a quiet dock on the Waccamaw, because Coastal Carolina has no game on Saturday, Oct. 24. It's a bye week. That's the honest truth, and I'm going to use it the way the tide uses the moon: to pull back, regroup and come in strong.
So, two things today. First, we look back at Friday night's 35-32 loss to App State. Then we look ahead to Halloween in Atlanta, where the Chanticleers have a little history I'd like to tell you about, kindly and at length.
Part 1: The Friday Night Tide Chart
App State beat Coastal 35-32 at Brooks Stadium on Friday, Oct. 16, in front of 19,485 people. We're 2-5 and 1-2 in the Sun Belt. That stings like stepping on a shell barefoot. But I want you to see the whole beach, not just the shell.
The first half was high tide. Deuce Bailey threw a 21-yard touchdown pass to Tristian Gardner on our first drive. After App State went up 14-7, Bailey found Robby Washington for 71 yards to tie it. Then Bailey put together a 13-play, 78-yard drive and hit Ben Verges for an 8-yard touchdown with 1:53 left in the half. And then, my friends, the moment I'll be telling my grandchildren about. Reggie Jean recovered a fumble with 12 seconds left. Bailey hit Colton Hinton for 24 yards. And Nico Cavanillas Alti kicked a career-long 58-yard field goal as the half ended. 24-14, Chants. Teal deal, y'all.
Then the tide went out. App State scored 21 straight points. Jaquari Lewis finished with four touchdown runs, and the Mountaineers' backup, Henry Hasselbeck, ran 21 times for 125 yards and threw a 31-yard touchdown pass for a 35-24 lead with 6:41 left. Devin Henderson picked off Bailey in the third quarter to set up one of those scores.
But here's the part I love. Our kids came back. Jaden Allen-Hendrix ran it in from 2 yards out with 3:11 left, and Bailey hit Dominic Lee-Knicely for the two-point conversion. 35-32. App State ran out the clock from there, but the Chants made them earn every second.
Bailey threw for 298 yards and three touchdowns. Washington caught five passes for 118 yards. Lee-Knicely ran for 90. Marcellius Pulliam made 12 tackles, and he leads the team with 67 this season. And we had only one turnover and five penalties.
Here's my sunburn, though. App State ran for 253 yards and converted 8 of 14 third downs. We'll need to fix that during this off week. Our run defense is giving up 198.7 yards a game, per ESPN.
Before Friday, we won 27-21 at Marshall on Oct. 10. So the season isn't a shipwreck. It's a boat that needs one good week in the dry dock.
The Bye Week, Honestly
Nobody plays Coastal this Saturday. I'll spend it on the Conway Riverwalk, the stretch of restaurants along the Waccamaw River that anchors the downtown renovation, according to Wikipedia. I'll eat something fried, watch the river and arrange seashells into formations on the table until the waiter asks me to stop. A bye week is just low tide, y'all. Low tide is when you find the good shells.
Part 2: Halloween in the City Named Terminus
Our next game is Saturday, Oct. 31, at Georgia State, at Center Parc Stadium in Atlanta. ESPN has the kickoff time and TV as not yet announced, so I'll tell you when I know.
Let me tip my sun hat to the Panthers first. Georgia State is 4-2, and ESPN has them scoring 36.5 points a game while allowing 24.0. Cameran Brown has thrown for 1,291 yards and 13 touchdowns. Rodshaun Dorsey has seven touchdown catches. Lanear McCrary Jr. has 385 rushing yards. Xavier Esqillion has seven sacks, which is a lot of sacks, and I will be explaining him to you with a very large seashell. They also have their own business on Saturday, at Arkansas State, so they'll come into our game off a road trip while we come in rested. Tide's coming in.
Now. The history. According to CollegeFootballData.com, Coastal Carolina has played at Center Parc Stadium four times: 2018, 2020, 2022 and 2024. Coastal won all four. And on Oct. 31, 2020, which was Halloween, Coastal beat Georgia State 51-0 in that stadium. Fifty-one to nothing, on Halloween, in Atlanta. Y'all, that's a spooky little stat for somebody, and it isn't us.
The overall series is close. CFBD has Coastal up 5-4, and we won 40-27 in Conway last November. Georgia State also beat us 30-17 in Conway in 2023. So I respect the Panthers. But in their building, in four tries, our rooster has never lost.
And about that building. Wikipedia says Center Parc was built for the 1996 Olympics, then converted into Turner Field, the home of the Atlanta Braves, and then converted again for football. It's had more makeovers than my beach bag. We, meanwhile, play on the teal turf at Brooks Stadium, which The Sun News reports was the idea of former Chants punt returner Zach Silverberg and debuted Sept. 19, 2015. The school believes it was the first teal field in the world. Their stadium was built for the Olympics, then baseball, then football. Ours was built for us, and then we painted the grass the color of the sea.
Let's talk mascots, kindly. A Panther is a fine animal. But the Sun News explains that our Chanticleer comes from Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, a rooster who rules the barnyard with cunning and wit. It's pronounced SHON-ti-cleer. Georgia State's mascot is a big cat. Ours has a literary pedigree going back more than 600 years. One of us was assigned reading.
Tales From Two Towns
Conway. My hometown sits on a bluff overlooking the Waccamaw River. Wikipedia says it was founded in 1732 as part of Royal Governor Robert Johnson's township plan, and the early colonists called it Kings Town and then Kingston. Today it has 24,849 people, up from 17,103 in 2010, and it's part of the Myrtle Beach metro area, which means the ocean is a short drive from my front porch. We've got the Riverwalk, the river, the beach down the road and a teal football field. If you want a better way to spend a fall Saturday, I don't know where you'd find it.
Atlanta. Atlanta is a big, busy city of 498,715, and I hope its folks have a lovely Halloween. But Wikipedia tells me the place was first named Terminus, because it was the end point of a railroad. Then Thrasherville. Then Marthasville, when it had six buildings and 30 residents in 1842. Conway was already more than a hundred years old by then. Atlanta also has the world's busiest airport, per Wikipedia, which tells me a whole lot of people are trying very hard to get somewhere else, like the beach. And the city was literally named Terminus, meaning the end. For Georgia State on Halloween, in four tries, it has been.
Low Tide Notes
1. Run defense. App State ran for 253 yards. The bye week is for the big guys up front. 2. Keep Bailey cooking. He's thrown 16 touchdowns with four interceptions this season, per ESPN. 3. Remember Halloween 2020. The tide can come all the way in.
Rest up, Chants. Teal deal, y'all.