HERCULES TIRES CHAMPIONSHIP GAME
Saturday, Dec. 3
Coastal Carolina at Troy 2:30 p.m. ESPN
Dave Fleiming (PxP)
Rod Gilmore (Analyst)
Tiffany Blackmon (Sideline)
All Times CT
HOW THEY GOT HERE
COASTAL CAROLINA
Coastal Carolina (9-2, 6-2 SBC) is seeking its second Sun Belt football title over the past three seasons in Saturday’s Hercules Tires Sun Belt Football Championship Game at Veterans Memorial Stadium in Troy, Ala. The game is set for 3:30 p.m. ET/2:30 p.m. CT and will be broadcast nationwide on ESPN.
A two-time championship game qualifier since the event’s inception in 2018, the Chanticleers will be competing in the title bout for the first time Saturday. Coastal Carolina shared the conference title with Louisiana in 2020, after the championship game was cancelled due to COVID-19. The matchup with Troy (10-2, 7-1 SBC) will be the lone FBS conference championship game featuring a pair of teams with two-or-fewer losses this season.
Coastal Carolina will also be seeking its third-straight 10-win campaign in the Sun Belt Football Championship. With a win, the Chanticleers would join Alabama and Clemson as the lone programs with three-straight 10-win seasons in 2020, 2021 and 2022. The Chanticleers—who boast a 31-5 mark since the start of 2020, trailing only Alabama (36-4) and Georgia (34- 3)—will also be bound for a bowl game for the third-straight year.
Coastal Carolina opened its season with a 38-28 win over Army in front of a record-setting crowd of 21,165 at Brooks Stadium on Saturday, Sept. 3, picking up the 150th win in program history. The team from Conway also added nonconference victories over Gardner-Webb, 31-27, and Buffalo, 38-26, at home, before surviving its first road test in its conference opener at Georgia State, 41-24, to get off to its fourth-straight 4-0 start.
In arguably the most iconic moment of the Chanticleers 2022 campaign thus far, redshirt sophomore running back CJ Beasley hurdled a Georgia Southern defender at the 8-yard line to find paydirt with 38 seconds remaining to vault Coastal Carolina to a 34-30 victory in front of a crowd of 19,139 at Brooks Stadium. The “Myrtle Hurdle” capped a 20-6 Coastal Carolina run over the final 12:09. The following week, Coastal Carolina became one of the first teams in the nation to clinch bowl eligibility with a 28-21 win over ULM to secure its third-straight 6-0 start, as one of the last two unbeaten teams from a non-autonomy conference alongside conference foe James Madison.
Old Dominion knocked the Chanticleers from the ranks of the unbeaten, 49-21, on Saturday, Oct. 15—but Coastal Carolina rebounded with three-straight conference victories over Marshall, 24-13; App State, 35-28; and Southern Miss, 26-23 to become the last remaining one-loss team from a non-autonomy conference. The victory over App State in a nationally-televised Thursday night showdown between the only two teams to have represented the Sun Belt East Division in the championship game came in front of yet another record-setting crowd of 21,224 at Brooks Stadium. With the win over Southern Miss, the Chanticleers improved to 10-0 against Sun Belt West Division opponents since the start of the 2020 season and also clinched the Sun Belt East Division title and a spot in the Sun Belt Football Championship.
Coastal Carolina’s Nov. 19 date with Virginia was cancelled due to the tragic events of Nov. 13 that resulted in the deaths of three members of the Cavaliers football program. The Chanticleers enter Saturday’s Sun Belt Football Championship coming off a 47-7 loss to James Madison, but have rallied from each of their four prior defeats since the start of the 2020 season. Coastal Carolina has not lost back-to-back games since it dropped three-straight to conference foes from Nov. 7-23, 2019.
Redshirt junior quarterback Grayson McCall—the two-time reigning Sun Belt Player of the Year—has completed 168-of-244 passes for 2,314 yards and 21 touchdowns this season, while rushing for another 165 yards and four scores.
One of the nation’s premier signal-callers, McCall leads the Sun Belt and ranks second nationally in passing efficiency (176.1) and sits eighth nationally in completion percentage (.689). He is also among the Top 35 in the FBS in total points responsible for per game (16.7), passing yards per game (257.1) and total offense (275.4). McCall has missed the past three weeks—and two games—with a foot injury sustained in the victory over App State, with the Chanticleers turning to redshirt junior Jarrett Guest and super senior Bryce Carpenter in his absence.
Whether or not McCall plays, Coastal Carolina will have its full running back core at its disposal in the championship game, with redshirt junior Aaron Bedgood (8 Carries, 45 Yards, 1 Touchdown) and redshirt sophomore Braydon Bennett (7 Carries, 21 Yards) recently returned from injury. The duo will pair with redshirt sophomore CJ Beasley (130 Carries, 672 Yards, 4 Touchdowns) and senior Reese White (80 Carries, 443 Yards, 4 Touchdowns), who have combined for 1,115 rushing yards on the year in their absence.
Whether its McCall, Guest or Carpenter at quarterback, Coastal Carolina has been efficient through the air, ranking sixth in the nation in passing efficiency (163.08) this season. Credit wideouts redshirt senior Sam Pinckney (56 Catches, 836 Yards, 2 Touchdowns) and redshirt freshman Jared Brown (42 Catches, 709 Yards, 5 Touchdowns), who have been consistent targets all year.
On the defensive side of the ball, redshirt junior linebacker JT Killen has compiled a team-high 89 tackles; redshirt senior defensive lineman Jerrod Clark and sophomore defensive lineman Josaiah Stewart have tallied a team-high 9.0 tackles for loss apiece; and defensive lineman Adrian Hope has led the way with 5.5 sacks.
Redshirt senior defensive back Lance Boykin, who currently ranks second on the team with 50 tackles and is 1-of-3 Chanticleers with two interceptions on the season, is also a key contributor.
A win Saturday would secure the second Sun Belt title in three seasons for the Chanticleers and would be the first victory by a road team in the five-year history of the event. Coastal Carolina maintains a 3-2 lead in the all-time series with Troy, having won three-straight one-possession games in the past three meetings in 2019 (36-35), 2020 (42-38) and 2021 (35-28).
TROY
Troy (10-2, 7-1 SBC) is seeking its conference-best seventh Sun Belt football title in Saturday’s Hercules Tires Sun Belt Football Championship Game on its home turf at Veterans Memorial Stadium in Troy, Ala. The game is set for 3:30 p.m. ET/2:30 p.m. CT and will be broadcast nationwide on ESPN.
This will be the Trojans first appearance in the championship game since the event’s inception in 2018, snapping a string of four-straight West Division titles for Louisiana in its first year in the division. Troy made the shift from the East Division to the West Division with the addition of four new members to the Sun Belt ahead of the 2022 campaign.
The matchup with Coastal Carolina (9-2, 6-2 SBC) will be the lone FBS conference championship game featuring a pair of teams with two-or-fewer losses this season.
Troy is in the midst of a nine-game winning streak—its longest since 1999—and is tied with UTSA for the longest streak among teams from non-autonomy conferences.
The Trojans dropped their season-opener at then-No. 21/24 Ole Miss, 28-10, before picking up a 38-17 win over Alabama A&M for the first victory of the Jon Sumrall era in their home opener.
With the eyes of the college football world affixed on the Sun Belt in Week 3, as the College GameDay crew climbed into the Carolina high country for the conference opener between Troy and App State, the Trojans nearly spoiled the Mountaineers party. The game came down to the final play, with App State prevailing on a 53-yard Hail Mary that has been dubbed the second “Miracle on the Mountain.”
The adversity of that moment—falling to 1-2 overall and 0-1 in conference play—brought the Trojans locker room together in their first year under a first-time head coach.
Troy has not lost since, rattling off nine-straight wins. The run began with the first-ever conference win over Marshall, 16-7; a non-conference victory over Western Kentucky, 34-27; the first-ever conference win over Southern Miss, 27-10; and an 11th-consecutive win over Texas State, 17-14.
A subsequent three-game stretch from Oct. 20-Nov. 12 proved pivotal for the Trojans.
Troy prevailed, 10-6, in a defensive battle on the road at in-state rival South Alabama in front of a crowd of 25,450 on Thursday, Oct. 20, spoiling the first-ever sellout at Hancock Whitney Stadium. The fifth-straight victory in the Battle for the Belt rivalry game proved to be the tiebreaker in punching the Trojans ticket to the Hercules Tires Sun Belt Football Championship over the Jaguars.
Coming off its bye week, Troy scored 23 unanswered points over the final 15:00, capped by a 22-yard touchdown run by sophomore running back Kimani Vidal with five seconds remaining in a 23-17 victory over Louisiana. The Trojans did not score until time expired in the third quarter, overcoming a 17-0 deficit.
The following week, Troy erased a 9-0 halftime deficit in a 10-9 win over Army—a game that drew a program-record sellout crowd of 31,010 to Veterans Memorial Stadium. Senior linebacker Carlton Martial made a career-high 22 tackles in the contest to become the all-time NCAA career record holder.
Since, Troy has registered convincing wins over ULM, 34-16, and Arkansas State, 48-19, behind back-to-back 200-yard rushing days from Vidal.
Junior quarterback Gunnar Watson has completed 181-of-295 passes for 2,387 yards and 10 touchdowns this season—with wide receivers sophomore Tez Johnson (49 Catches, 764 Yards, 4 Touchdowns) and senior RaJae’ Johnson (30 Catches, 538 Yards, 4 Touchdowns) serving as his primary targets.
Vidal (189 Carries, 1,006 Yards, 9 Touchdowns) became the 11th 1,000-yard rusher in Trojans program history—and the 10th different player to do so—amassing 450 of those yards over the final two games of the regular season. He is spelled by senior running back DK Billingsley (125 Carries, 599 Yards, 5 Touchdowns) in the ground game.
The trademark Trojan defense has allowed just 16.8 points per game—eighth in the nation—and 316.4 yards of total offense per game—16th in the nation—to its opponents this season.
Martial leads the way with a team-high 112 tackles, followed by senior safety Craig Slocum Jr. with 89. Sophomore defensive lineman T.J. Jackson (14.5 TFL, 8.0 Sacks) and junior defensive lineman Richard Jibunor (10.0 TFL, 6.5 Sacks) have proven stout on the defensive front.
Junior defensive back Reddy Steward, who ranks fourth on the team with 55 tackles and paces the Trojans with three interceptions, is also a key contributor.
A win Saturday would secure the conference-leading seventh Sun Belt title for the Trojans—the first in the championship game era and the first since 2017. A Troy victory would also snap a string of three-straight one-possession losses to Coastal Carolina and would keep the home team undefeated in the five-year history of the Hercules Tires Sun Belt Football Championship.
