Defense Does It
Appalachian State’s offense found its stride a few weeks ago, but the defense seemed to lag behind.
The Mountaineers continued to click on offense in yesterday’s game against Georgia Southern, boosting their averages in the last three games to an impressive 50 points and 656 yards a game.
They rank first in the Southern Conference in scoring, and first in conference games in yards gained.
The defense, in contrast, entered yesterday’s game ranking seventh among the SoCon’s nine teams, having allowed an average of 366 yards a game. Only one SoCon team had allowed more points a game.
Something had to change, cornerback Cortez Gilbert said. He said he and his teammates were tied of hearing about defensive deficiencies.
“Don’t take this personal, but we’re just tired of so many people, from fans to media, talking about our defense, asking us, ‘Are we as good as we used to be?’” Gilbert said.
Yesterday, the Mountaineers’ defense was good as ever. Georgia Southern managed just one offensive touchdown. The Eagles totaled 156 yards, including only 15 rushing.
“Today, from here on out, we’re proving to everybody that we are better than what we used to be,” Gilbert said. “This isn’t the ’05 team. This isn’t the ’06 team. This isn’t the ’07 team. This is the ’09 team and that’s how we’re going to play from here on out.”
Gilbert, a senior, was pleased that the defense – which has all but two starters back from the ’08 team – made a statement and finally lived up to expectations. He wasn’t saying that some of the assessments or questions weren’t valid. He said he was just tired of hearing about it.
“Some of it was valid,” Gilbert said. “It just gets to the point where you’re like, ‘Man, how many times are we going to hear about our defense?’ So it’s just time for us to really just prove ourselves so that there’s no more question about it.
“Some of that stuff was true. We were giving up a lot of yards, games were close and we were giving up points. So, some of it was true. It just got to the point as a defense, as a player, how many more times are we going to hear how bad we’re playing? We want to start hearing how good we are.”
The Mountaineers were good on defense yesterday.
Why?
“If you all were (in the team room) Monday, you all would know why,” Gilbert said, alluding to a soul-searching, heart-to-heart session among players and coaches in preparation for practice leading to the Georgia Southern game.
“There was communication from the coaches challenging us to man up and be the team that we can be.
“We rarely go Monday in shells (helmets and shoulder pads). Monday, we went with shells. Tuesday we went hard. Wednesday went hard. We had three really hard-working days. The defense had the attitude that we were just going to get to the ball. If you didn’t get to the ball, you were going to get cussed at and get fussed at.
“When (coaches) turn on the tape (today), we wanted to let them know we got to the ball and we responded to the challenge.”
Coach Jerry Moore said that last week was a week of adjustment.
“If you’re not careful, you’ll get into a little bit of a rut,” Moore said. “Things were going all right, but all right sometimes isn’t good enough.
“We went back to our old way of practicing. We were running to the football. Tuesday and Wednesday we had really physical practices.
“When you’re in my shoes you worry about a couple of things: you worry about getting somebody hurt and you worry about legs and being tired on Saturday. So, consequently, we didn’t run sprints after practice on Wednesday. They practiced I thought hard enough that they didn’t need any conditioning, and we didn’t even work in pads on Thursday. We had worked in pads on Monday – we typically don’t, not this late in the season.
“So I was proud of how they reacted. It paid off.”