Wednesday, February 03, 2010
Signing-day notes and other items:
Appalachian State’s quarterback situation heading into the post-Armanti Edwards won’t become clear until later this year, but it is beginning to take form.
Coach Jerry Moore said yesterday that Tavaris Cadet, the top backup for Edwards last season, will indeed be moved to full-time receiver in spring practice, which will begin in three weeks. And DeAndre Presley, the former backup who was moved to receiver last season, will go back to quarterback.
The top candidate, however, is most likely Jamal Jackson, a 6-3, strong-armed prospect who was red-shirted last season.
And freshmen Elijah Adamiak and Kalik Barnes, both of whom were among the Mountaineers’ class of 15 signees today, could be counted on for a supporting role next season if needed. One of the them will likely be moved to another position, and conventional wisdom would seem to be that Barnes, two inches taller than the 5-10 Adamiak, might be the favorite to stick at quarterback.
So, heading into the fall, the Mountaineers plan to have Jackson, Presley and one of the freshmen in place at quarterback. Cadet, a proven running threat, will focus on settling in at receiver.
“(Cadet) did a lot a great job for us last year in lots of ways, coming in as a new player,” Moore said. “He’s a very talented player and we moved him around a lot. His attitude was super. We’re going to let him learn at receiver, and just concentrate on that and kick returns with him.
“(Presley) really wanted to go back to quarterback and it really fit us because it allows us to leave Cadet as an M back, a motion back – a running back, receiver kind of guy – and not worry him with quarterback anymore. Now that we’ve got these two guys (Adamiak and Barnes), one of them will be a quarterback and the other will be wherever we need him.”
Moore also said that a focus in spring ball will be finding a role for former quarterback prospect Jamill Lott, part of last year’s recruiting class.
“Lott is a guy that we’ll determine in the next three weeks whether he will be a defensive back or receiver,” Moore said. “He’s a very talented athlete and we’ve got to get him on the field. And we have guys like (Tony) Washington and (Andrew) Peacock and (Rodger) Walker. For example, we’re interested in seeing Peacock at running back. We have good running backs but he gives us a real speed guy.”
ASSISTANT COACH SEARCH
Moore said that hopes are to have a new defensive coordinator and offensive line coach in place in time for spring practice, and that there are a lot of candidates to replace John Wiley (now at East Carolina) and Shawn Elliott (now at South Carolina).
“We’ve been interviewing a lot for the last week and will continue this week and all of next week,” Moore said. “We have had a really special response to that, some guys from some great programs. I think some of that has to do with (our new) facilities and some of that has to do with tradition. I hate to use the word surprised, but I am pleasantly surprised with some of the people that have shown interest in these jobs.”
CHRIS AIKEN
The Mountaineers’ first signee was 25-year-old Chris Aiken, a 6-1, 310-pound defensive lineman from Austin, Texas, who played two seasons at Blinn College in Brenham, Texas. He signed early and enrolled at ASU in January.
Before playing at Blinn, Aiken spent five years in the Army and served two tours of duty in Iraq. He is the third Iraq war veteran to join the Mountaineers’ program, following Wayne Norman (2005) and Brian Stokes (2005-06).
“I don’t think there is any doubt about his maturity and commitment,” Moore said of Aiken. “Chris is a great young guy. His mom is a principal of a school in Austin, Texas. He had two terms in (Afgahistan or Iraq). When we saw him on tape, he’s a guy that can run for a guy that weighs 300 pounds. He plays hard.
“We felt like one of the places we needed, where we were a little deficient in, was defensive linemen having some size and weight to them. He gives us that immediately. He’s here on campus and will go through spring practice with us.”
GEORGIA MILITARY CONNECTION
The Mountaineers signed three players from Georgia Military College – tight end Antonio Danzy and defensive linemen Derrick Shuemake and Dan Wylie. All will be juniors next season, and Moore thinks all can have immediate impact.
“You go after junior-college guys because of immediate needs, and we’ve had a great relationship with Georgia Military for a number of years,” Moore said.
Several Georgia Military players have been standouts at ASU, including Troy Albea, Jerry Beard, Malcolm Bennett, Nygel Rogers, Jimmy Watkins and Daniel Wilcox.
MORE FROM GEORGIA
Eight of today’s 15 signees are from Georgia. And 12 of the Mountaineers’ 16 incoming recruits are from outside of North Carolina.
“We don’t focus on where they’re from,” Moore said. “That said, given a kid from North Carolina and a kid from Florida or Georgia or wherever, everything being equal we’d love to have the kid from North Carolina. But if a kid from North Carolina is not that interested in us, then we’re going to go hard on that kid from Florida or Georgia or wherever.
“My philosophy about recruiting is that it’s nice to be wanted. We go out and spend a lot of time locating these players, we recruit them hard and bring them in for a nice weekend. At some point and time, I really want to know that a guy really wants to be at Appalachian State…I want to read from him that it’s really important for him to be at Appalachian State.”
NEW FACILITY HELPS
Moore said that ASU’s new athletic complex at Kidd Brewer Stadium is a definite boon to recruiting.
“This is the first year we’ve really recruited into this new facility,” he said. “This is the first year we’ve got to expose the (recruits) to everything on a game weekend. This will be a big part of the future here, having official visits on a weekend when we have a ballgame.”
And, Moore said: “I think there was a lot more interest in us this year for one reason or another. I think we had more quality players that came up during the season and experienced games here at home and I think that helped us a lot.”
By Tommy Bowman at 08:24 PM
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Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Kellen Brand, transported to the hospital to check out a back injury just three days earlier, showed no lingering effects Saturday when he scored 19 points in Appalachian State’s victory over Western Carolina.
It was a big win for the Mountaineers heading into this week’s road trip – at Samford Thursday and Chattanooga Saturday – and a nice recovery for Brand, a senior from High Point who has earned a reputation as a tough, hard-nosed competitor.
Brand flipped over a defender and landed on his back in a Jan. 20 game at Georgia Southern and had difficulty moving. He was taken on a backboard and stretcher to East Georgia Regional Medical Center as a precautionary measure. He was examined and released, but Brand said that it was a scary moment.
“I thank God he pulled me out of that situation,” Brand said. “It could have been a lot worse than it was. I’m OK now.”
It’s not the first time Brand has been hurt. A former football player, Brand has taken his share of knocks and collisions and seems to thrive on them.
“One of the officials told me, ‘That kid’s always on the floor,’” Coach Buzz Peterson of the Mountaineers said Saturday. “He fell one time today and I heard the biggest thump. I didn’t see it, but I heard it, and knew that if I looked it would be Brand on the ground again. But that’s KB. I can’t fault him. He plays hard and gives everything.”
Brand’s trip to the hospital wasn’t his first one, either. He collapsed after a collision in a game at Western Carolina two years ago and was transported to the nearest hospital. Brand was asked if there was a hospital in a Southern Conference town that he hadn’t been to.
“I’ve actually been to all of them, I think,” Brand said. “But I’m trying to stay out of them now, since I’ve visited every one.”
Monday, January 25, 2010
Coach Jerry Moore said that he’ll be ready to run sprints by the time Appalachian State’s preseason football camp rolls around.
“I’m looking forward to racing CoCo,” said the 70-year-old Moore, who had knee-replacement surgery on both knees Dec. 28 and was up and moving relatively well just a few days after. His challenge was to speedy receiver CoCo Hillary, who also is recovering from knee surgery.
It was a tough week for Moore when he had the surgery done, however. His mother died two days before, at age 88 in Moore’s hometown of Bonham, Texas.
“We went to the funeral service – it was a terrific, perfect service – and left as soon as it was over, got to Charlotte about 7 o’clock on Sunday night and had surgery about 10 Monday morning.” Moore said. “It’s all been really good since, the rehab and everything.”
Moore said that the surgery was something that he’s wanted to do, given that both knees having bothered him for some time.
“I felt like I set us back, held us back, at Montana a little bit, because I was limping around and so gimpy in that hotel,” Moore said. “That’s a bad thing for those kids to see 24 hours before we’re getting ready to go play. It might not have affected them, but it affected me. I wanted to get it fixed so I took care of it.”
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Mike Kent says that it’s good to be “home.”
He returned to Appalachian State in December as strength and conditioning coach for athletics, a job he had held for nine years before moving on to oversee programs at Louisville, Pitt and Kansas State.
When Jeff Dillman left ASU last August to become director of athletic performance at IMG Academies in Bradenton, Fla., Kent said he and his wife Deena were very interested in the possibility of returning.
They had built a home between Boone and Mountain City, Tenn., in 1992, kept it and had been using it as a vacation home.
“It was time to come back,” Kent said. “My wife and I have been a bunch of different places since we left, so it’s basically coming back to the roots of what really got us started. I had been coaching before I got here, but we were here from 1990 to ’99, which were great years.”
Kent said that the nine years he spent at ASU were the most he’s ever stayed in one place. He said that he moved around a lot growing up. His father, who now lives in Garner, was a district manager for a five-and-dime retail chain. Kent and his wife, a veterinarian technician, are both originally from West Virginia.
“We’re mountain people, basically,” Kent said. “We like trees and all that good stuff.”
Kent said that he’s amazed at how the campus had changed and grown while he was away. He is enjoying working in ASU’s new athletic complex, which opened this past football season.
“It’s impressive,” Kent said. “The utilization of space is incredible. One day last week we had field hockey, football and wrestling team all working out at the same time. We couldn’t have done that in the old facility.”
But Kent said that, in a lot of ways, it’s like he never left ASU.
“Once you come to App State you’re always App State, even when you go out there,” Kent said. “There is a piece that goes with you. I haven’t been anywhere in my profession that you don’t run into someone that’s either coached or played at App State, and they’re always excited about it. It’s like you’re always vested somehow.”
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Much has been said about Appalachian State’s high number of turnovers the last two seasons, but perhaps just as notable is the fact that the Mountaineers haven’t forced any turnovers.
The result is a turnover margin that ranks last in the Southern Conference.
The Mountaineers have reduced their turnovers recently, but opponents have turned the ball over just 10.8 times against them – an average of nearly nine per game less than league-leader Western Carolina. The Mountaineers have averaged just 5.2 steals a game, half the amount of the league-leader.
Coach Buzz Peterson said there is a reason his team doesn’t force many turnovers.
“We’re not out there pressuring a lot,” he said. “Our personnel doesn’t match that, to do a lot of that. We’ve got one guy in there weighing almost 300 pounds (center Ike Butts) and another that has bad knees (forward Josh Hunter). Sometimes we’re limited in what we can do, so we have to kind of protect the goal – which I think is most important.
“If I had my way I’d be out there pressuring, getting in the passing lanes and doing all kinds of things…but we don’t force a whole lot. We’re concentrating on protecting the goal rather than being out there focusing on making you turn it over.”
Peterson said that he’s pleased to see a reduction of turnovers made. The Mountaineers have had totals of 7, 12 and 13 – all less than their season average of 16 – in three of the last four games.
“Maybe their tired of having to run up to the roof,” said Peterson, who has players run up steps to the top row of seats at Holmes Center after turning the ball over in practice.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Given what Stephen Curry did for the Davidson Wildcats, the performance that Donald Sims gave Saturday on a court that Curry ruled for three seasons is significant.
Sims, a junior for Appalachian State, broke Curry’s single-game scoring record at Belk Arena, totaling 44 points in a 78-68 victory over the Wildcats. The record was 41, set by Curry in a 2008 game against Chattanooga.
As a side note, Curry’s play has seemed to bring the best out of Sims.
“The last time I had a game like this was against Stephen,” Sims said.
He was referring to a 41-point performance he had in an AAU game in Las Vegas in 2005 against a team led by Curry.
Sims also scored 29 points against Curry and the Wildcats in last season’s SoCon Tournament. Curry, now a starting guard with the Golden State Warriors, had 43 in that game.
Sims hopes to play professional basketball some day but, if that doesn’t work out, he is considering a career in nursing. Coach Buzz Peterson of the Mountaineers said that Sims would be a good candidate to become a coach.
“He’s a smart student of the game,” Peterson said. “He played for Fletcher Arritt for two years at Fork Union. I remember Donald up there. He’s just a very heady, smart ballplayer. He’s one of the guys in film sessions that will ask you questions, and as a coach you love to have those guys. He’s pretty intelligent.”
For more on Sims, read Wednesday’s Winston-Salem Journal.
Monday, January 11, 2010
Appalachian State is 2-2 in the Southern Conference – as in two good road wins and two not-so-good home losses.
So much for home-court advantage.
“Hopefully our guys will think they’re somewhere besides Boone for their game on Wednesday,” Coach Buzz Peterson of ASU said, perhaps only half-joking. “Maybe I’ll get a bus and drive them around Banner Elk and Blowing Rock and act like we’re not at home.”
It’s been an odd season for the Mountaineers.
The league wins have come at Wofford (a team that’s 2-0 against SEC competition) and Davidson (a program that has lost few games at home in recent years).
The losses, both at home, are against Furman (which was 6-24 last season) and The Citadel (which had lost 17 straight games to the Mountaineers before a breakthrough last season).
“We’ve had a few focus issues at the house,” Donald Sims of the Mountaineers said. “We’ve got to get better at that. We’ve got to protect home court if we want to be a good team in this league.”
The Mountaineers will play at home twice this week – Wednesday against Elon and Saturday against UNC Greensboro. Both opponents are 3-12.
Friday, January 08, 2010
Brad Yoder is looking forward to the debut of “Madhouse,” a 13-part television series following the lives and antics of stock-car drivers at Winston-Salem’s Bowman Gray Stadium that will begin airing Sunday.
Yoder, a 1994 graduate of Appalachian State, was an associate producer for the series, which will run weekly on the History Channel.
“Sunday, 10 p.m.,” Yoder said. “Watch or set the DVRs.”
Yoder, who grew up in High Point, majored in psychology at ASU, and went on to UNC to pursue a master’s degree in sports psychology with plans to pursue a career with a pro sports franchise. But he also had an interest in films.
“I had some friends that wanted to move to Los Angeles and I thought, ‘You know what, I’ve always lived in North Carolina and would like to live somewhere else just to see way it’s like,’ so I took off out there and jumped right into the industry and started a production company,” Yoder said.
As an actor, he has appeared in several movies, television shows and commercials – everything from a part in “Beverly Hill 90210” to an Anheuser Busch ad that appeared during NASCAR events.
He spent last summer as an associate producer for “Madhouse,” and recently completed a film “Red Dirt Rising,” based on the life of stock-car racing pioneer Jimmie Lewallen of High Point.
Yoder plays the role of Lewallen and was also an associate producer for “Red Dirt Rising.”. He said that the movie is being shown at film festivals across the country and hopes that it will make it to general theaters and later be available on DVD.
He is currently working on developing a feature film entitled “Seabreeze,” which chronicles the evolution of beach and shag music in the 1940s and ‘50s.
Yoder said that he still has time to follow ASU sports.
“The programs there have just grown tremendously,” Yoder said. “It was nice to turn on the TV and see Appalachian beating Michigan, let me tell you that.”
Saturday, December 19, 2009
We’ll be back in January. Merry Christmas to everyone!
By Tommy Bowman at 07:42 PM
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Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Appalachian State’s football season ended Saturday with a 24-17 loss to Montana in the semifinals of the NCAA Football Championship Subdivision playoffs.
Here are responses to 10 questions posed to Coach Jerry Moore of the Mountaineers in an interview today:
1. How is Brian Quick handling the drop of the last-play pass, which after watching on replay wasn’t the easiest ball to catch?
“Even at that, you expect him to make that play. I didn’t really get much of a chance to talk to him. That locker room was so somber…. We had penalties that were just as bad as the drop, because they took us out of position to score. I think he’s alright. It bothered him earlier in the game when he dropped a ball on the scoreboard end. We had plays that we generally make.”
2. What did you like best about this year’s team?
“I liked the way they came together after starting off 0-2, in a situation we could possibly have been 2-0. But we’re 0-2 and they responded. We go to The Citadel and win that overtime game there and I think the fact that we just continually got a little bit better as the season progressed was important. I think that’s a mark of a good football team. We just had the misfortune of making too many mistakes in the Montana game. The penalties were huge.”
3. How could this team have been better?
“I think early-on I would liked to have seen us be better on defense. During a two-a-days it was hard to move the ball against the defense. I really put a confidence and trust in our defense and we got to East Carolina and don’t play very well the first half, either side of the ball but particularly defense. We didn’t play very well on defense against McNeese and that really became a concern. But we got a little bit better and better and played well on defense, and particularly at Richmond. We played pretty well at Montana except for containing that running back. He’s a good player and he had a premier day against us.”
4. Any reason the tight end wasn’t as involved in the offense as he was last year?
“Ben (Jorden) stayed hurt a lot. He had a lot of nagging injuries. He was never completely healthy, not like he was as a freshman. (Moore said that sophomore Jordan Gary, who moved from tight end to defensive end late in the season, will probably remain at defensive end.) He’ll be a really good defensive player.”
5. What happened with Robert Welton, who didn’t play much at running back, and Quavian Lewis, who many thought would be a factor at defensive end?
“(Welton) asked for a release. I don’t know for sure where he’s going to go, but he’s planning to transfer. Quavian could never get well. His knee was always aggravating him. Quavian was a great get and he could have helped us but he was so frustrated with that knee he could never get comfortable with it. After we played two or three games, we talked and decided he should just focus on school and getting his degree.”
6. Do you think Armanti Edwards will play in the NFL?
“I really do. I don’t remember the scout’s name, but he’s the one who did the workup on Drew Brees when he was at Purdue, and he says Armanti is just like him, that he’s the same size and everybody worried about the size (of Brees). I think the scouts now realize what a quick delivery Armanti has. He’s smart and he throws in the right places. He’s got a strong arm and I don’t think anybody is going to question his toughness. They’re more and more inclined to be in his corner right now, as a quarterback.”
7. Who will be the quarterback next season?
“I think that will be determined in the spring. One of our big decisions is what we do with (Travaris) Cadet? He and I will have a sit-down talk, and by that I mean I want to know what his feelings are. Of course Jamal Jackson is a guy we had the luxury of red-shirting. Now do you keep him and Cadet competing against each other, or do you split them up (leaving Cadet at receiver). We’re not going to know that until winter workouts start and we get into spring ball.”
8. Of the players you red-shirted this year, are there players among those that will significantly factor into things next season?
“I think there are several. To begin with, (Tony) Washington from High Point. We didn’t play against a receiver this year that was better than him. And there’s (Andrew) Peacock, we ran him as a scout-team running back. I don’t think we played against a back better than him this year. I know we didn’t play any with more speed than he’s got.”
9. You already have at least six commitments for next year, and it’s unusual for you to get commitments before the season is over. Why has that been different this year, and what are your recruiting needs and how many players do you expect to sign?
“I think the fact that we’ve won the way we have and the facilities and the excitement we have on game days are the main reasons. (Moore said there wasn’t a designed plan to get commitments earlier this year). It just happened…. We’re looking for mostly linemen. (Overall) I’d say we’ll sign between 10 to 15 guys.”
10. Are you looking forward to next season?
“It would be fine with me if we started up this afternoon. I think people will enjoy seeing whichever guy is at quarterback, and we have a lot of these guys back next year (nine starters on offense, seven on defense).”
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