Saturday, December 03, 2011
Appalachian State’s lack of run-game production caught up in a big way today, and its season ended in a 34-12 loss to Maine in the NCAA Football Championship Subdivision playoffs.
The Mountaineers, who totaled 275 yards overall, had only three yards rushing on 25 carries.
It was their lowest rushing total ever in a playoff game. The previous low was 28 in 2000 against Montana.
It was their lowest total overall since a minus-one yard performance against Northwestern State in 2004.
ASU entered this season with a string of six straight seasons with 10 or more wins. That streak ended today. The Mountaineers finished 8-4.
Today’s attendance of 15,291 at Kidd Brewer Stadium was the second-largest for an ASU playoff opener. The largest crowd for a playoff opener was 16,223 against Coastal Carolina in 2006.
Senior Brian Quick added one more receiving record. He became ASU’s all-time leader with 202 career receptions, breaking the previous record of 200 by DaVon Fowlkes. Quick set school records for career receiving yards (3,418) and touchdown catches (31) earlier this season.
Friday, December 02, 2011
Appalachian State hasn’t lost its opening game in the NCAA Football Championship Subdivision playoffs since it began its now-seven-year run of playoff appearances in 2005.
The Mountaineers have won six straight and are 12-6 overall in playoff openers.
Their last loss in a playoff opener was to Maine, in 2002.
ASU isn’t a seeded team in this year’s playoff field, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The Mountaineers are 6-1 in their last seven playoff games as an unseeded team. They won the 2007 national title and got to the semifinals in 2009 without the benefit of a seed.
Quarterback Jamal Jackson said that he’s fine with the fact that his team is in more of an underdog role this season than it’s been in recent seasons.
“We just need to come out and play our game, it doesn’t matter if we’re the top dog or underdog,” Jackson said.
Coach Jack Cosgrove of Maine is wary of displaced quarterback DeAndre Presley, who has done a variety of things since Jackson took over – from playing defensive back, returning punts to most recently being at receiver.
“It has made it much more difficult to defend them as an offense with Jackson and Presley perhaps on the field at the same time,” Cosgrove said. “That’s a challenge in itself right there. Presley is now doing other things on the offense that really make him much more of a concern as you try to defend them.”
This is the sixth straight season that ASU has faced an opponent from the Colonial Athletic Association in the playoffs. The game against Maine will mark the eighth time in the Mountaineers’ last 13 playoff games that they’ve faced a CAA team.
Overall, the Mountaineers are 9-3 against CAA opponents in playoff games.
ASU and Maine have met once before – in the 2002 playoffs. Maine won 14-13 in Boone.
Cosgrove said that there isn’t much to draw from in regard to the 2002 game, however.
“I think it’s way too long ago, and it’s different styles of football,” he said. “We were an I formation, tailback-oriented team back then. We were down to our third-string quarterback so we were very, very conservative that day. We’re no longer in any way, shape or form built on offense like that now. Nor on defense. We were an eight-man front on defense then.
“Football is played a little differently now. We’re in the Spread game, using the sideline-to-sideline attack. And certainly Appalachian State was constructed entirely different then. They were more of a tailback-oriented team at that point as well. It was kind of an old-fashioned type of game when we played them.”
Most of both team’s players were in grade school then.
“There aren’t a lot of guys who are going to have recollection of it other than Coach (Jerry) Moore and myself,” Cosgrove said
ASU and Maine, both 8-3, are virtually identical in terms of statistics this season.
ASU has generated an average of 401 yards and 30 points a game from its Spread offense this season. Maine, which also runs the Spread, is averaging 372 yards and 30 points. Both rely on the passing game for most of the yardage. The Mountaineers average 231 a game passing; the Black Bears average 240.
Defensively, ASU has allowed an average of 343 yards and 23 points a game. Maine has allowed 348 yards and 24 points.
Read more on the ASU-Maine playoff game in Saturday’s Winston-Salem Journal.
Monday, November 28, 2011
This is a story published Dec. 1, 2002, in the Winston-Salem Journal about the first-round playoff game in 2002 between Appalachian State and Maine. The teams will meet again in the playoffs Saturday in Boone.
MAINE KNOCKS APPALACHIAN STATE OUT OF PLAYOFFS
BLACK BEARS RALLY FROM EARLY DEFICIT, EDGE MOUNTAINEERS 14-13 IN FIRST ROUND
BOONE
By Tommy Bowman
JOURNAL REPORTER
With three minutes left in the third quarter of yesterday’s Division I-AA playoff game, Appalachian State appeared well on the way to extending its season for at least one more week.
The Mountaineers had a double-digits lead and a shutout, but they didn’t finish. Their season ended as result, as Maine swept to a 14-13 first-round victory at Kidd Brewer Stadium.
The Black Bears (11-2) will play Georgia Southern in next weekend’s quarterfinals.
“Our team continues to persevere,” said Coach Jack Cosgrove, whose Bears have won 10 of their last 12 road games, including a first-round playoff victory at McNeese State last season. “We found another way to win. We found big plays from our offense, and our defense really responded.”
Other than a 1-for-12 performance by the Mountaineers on third-down conversions, the game was basically a statistical deadlock.
But it wasn’t that way throughout.
The Mountaineers outgained the Bears 154 yards to 50 in the third quarter and built a 10-0 lead. But the Black Bears took charge in the decisive fourth quarter, outgaining the Mountaineers 138-26.
“(Maine) never panicked, I think that was pretty obvious,” said Coach Jerry Moore, whose Mountaineers finished 8-4.
Josh Jeffries, Appalachian’s All-America defensive end who played with the flu and had to take an IV at halftime, said: “We gave up some key plays, that’s been our problem all year long. We play hard, it’s just always minus a couple of plays.”
After a scoreless first half, the Mountaineers found some offense on the first play of the second half.
Jerry Beard (119 yards on 18 carries) took a pitch around the left side for a career-best 56-yard run. Four plays later, Joe Burchette scored the first points on a 1-yard plunge.
The Mountaineers followed with a 63-yard drive that stalled inside the 10 but got a 19-yard field goal from Mark Wright to go ahead 10-0.
“We felt pretty good at that point,” Beard said.
But things turned in a hurry.
Burchette, who completed 9 of 17 passes for 73 yards on a blustery day, was pressured on a third-down play from his 9 and threw a high pass across the middle that got caught in the wind.
Joan Quezada intercepted at the 33, and three plays later, Ryan Waller scored on a 27-yard pass from Jon Meczywor. The Bears trailed 10-7 with 1:26 left in the third quarter.
The Mountaineers took a 13-7 lead on Wright’s 47-yard field goal 13 seconds into the fourth quarter.
The Bears, however, drove 80 yards for the winning touchdown. Two third-down conversions were part of the drive, including a catch of a tipped pass by Kevin McMahan on a third-and-7 play from the Mountaineers’ 39.
After an offensive pass-interference penalty against Maine had the Bears facing first and 25 at the 41, tailback Marcus Williams broke through the line for the go-ahead 41-yard touchdown with 9:41 left.
“He hit the hole about as hard as he had all day, and nobody was there to tackle him,” Jeffries said. Williams had a game-high 157 yards on 29 carries.
The Mountaineers drove to the Bears’ 39 on their final possession but stalled. They decided to punt with 4:50 left, and Andrew Layton couldn’t hang on to Nate McKinney’s pooch attempt that would have nailed the Bears at the 2.
“I didn’t want to give them the ball right there (at the 39),” Moore said of the decision to punt, feeling that the Mountaineers were out of field-goal range. “There were five minutes to go, and I thought we’d get the ball back.”
But the Mountaineers never did.
The Black Bears, converting on three third-down plays, stuck to the ground, drove from their 20 to the Mountaineers’ 42 and used up the remaining time.
“That was huge,” said Meczywor, a sophomore who started for the second time as a fill-in for injured senior Jake Eaton. “Everybody knew it too, in the huddle.
“Every first down was closer to a win.”
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Observations and statistics on ASU’s offense and defense this season:
The offense hasn’t been as good, but the defense has been a bit better.
You probably didn’t need me to tell you that. But the numbers do back it up.
The most striking drops on offense are in the running game and red-zone touchdown production.
The 169.7 yards a game rushing are the fewest since the 2004 team had just 102.9. Of course, the 2004 team, the first to operate from the Spread offense, holds the school record for passing yards.
This season’s team has scored 31 touchdowns from red-zone opportunities. That’s the lowest regular-season total since 2003. The red-zone scoring rate (79.6 percent) is about the same as last year.
Overall on offense, the Mountaineers are averaging 400.7 yards and 30.2 points a game. The yardage total has extended the string of 400-plus-yard offenses to eight seasons in a row, but is the lowest since the 2003 team averaged just 296 a game. The point average is also the lowest since 2003’s average of 22.9, but about the same as the 2005 team that won the first national title.
The Spread production hit its peak from 2007 through 2009, when the Mountaineers averaged 464 to 488 yards a game.
Some possible reasons why the offensive production is down this season: offensive line performance, inexperience and attrition; adjustment to a different quarterback; improved SoCon opponents; and teams have a better handle on defending elements of the Spread offense than a few years ago. And two irreplacable components of those national-title years: Armanti Edwards was so dynamic, and Kevin Richardson such a reliable running back.
Defensively, ASU’s numbers of 343.1 yards allowed and 22.9 points allowed per game are a shade better than last season’s total. But the 66 points and 518 yards allowed against Virginia Tech skew those numbers a bit. This season’s defensive totals are much better than in 2007, but that 2007 team was so prolific on offense it almost didn’t need defense.
Speaking of which, it’s interesting to consider the 2006 and 2007 national-title teams.
The 2006 team posted remarkable defensive numbers. That team allowed just 277 yards and 14.9 points a game.
The 2007 team was all about offense. It averaged 488 yards and 42.7 points a game – both school records. Perhaps the most incredible statistic from that team was red-zone efficiency. It scored 69 out of 75 times inside the 20-yard line, 92 percent of the time.
Read more on the Mountaineers’ offense and defense as well as playoff prospects in Friday’s Winston-Salem Journal.
By Tommy Bowman at 05:33 PM
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Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Offensive tackle Kendall Lamm has been dismissed from Appalachian State’s program by coach Jerry Moore for “conduct that is not appropriate for an Appalachian State football player.”
According to ASU’s sports-information department, Lamm did not break any laws or violate any university policies. He will remain on scholarship for the rest of this semester.
Lamm, 6-foot-6, 280-pound freshman from Charlotte, started the first seven games this season at left tackle before missing two straight games with an ankle injury. He didn’t start but played in last Saturday’s game against Western Carolina.
Jerry Moore moved past his former boss Hayden Fry on the all-time victory list for NCAA Division I coaches last Saturday.
Moore won for the 233rd time, which ranks 18th on the all-time list.
Fry won 232 games as head coach at SMU, North Texas and Iowa.
Moore played at Baylor when Fry was a position coach there. And Moore’s first job as an assistant coach at the collegiate level was under Fry from 1965 through 1972 at SMU.
Fry, 82, retired in 1998 after 20 years as coach at Iowa. Moore said that he still calls periodically.
“In fact, I’ll probably get a call from him tonight,” Moore said Saturday, after passing Fry on the victory list.
“He’s always been an inspiration to me,” Moore said. “He’s a high-energy, highly-motivated kind of guy. I wish I had half his energy, and his optimism.”
Moore said that he learned a lot from Fry.
“I learned you don’t go by the book,” he said.
He recalled SMU’s victory over Oklahoma in the 1968 Bluebonnet Bowl, and how Fry’s out-of-the-box thinking helped secure that victory.
“Sometimes Hayden would do things that were not orthodox,” Moore said. “He’d take tight ends – and we didn’t have tight ends that look like Ben Jorden – so he’d take wide outs and stand them up in tight end positions. Everybody thought it was ridiculous. So he goes to Iowa and does that and they (go to) the Rose Bowl.
“We line up in what we call the Spread offense, but he called it the Flying Wishbone. The media guys there in Dallas wore him out about it because we went up to Oklahoma and just got beat bad with it. Then, two years later, everybody’s trying to do that Flying Wishbone deal.
“He was just very innovative. I had great experiences, and he was a great guy to work for. I’ve always been appreciative of him. I’ve been one of the most blessed coaches to work for him, Tom Osborne and Ken Hatfield. It doesn’t get any better than that.”
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Jason Swepson, Elon’s first-year head coach, spent two days visiting with Appalachian State’s offensive staff and observing practice in the spring of 2010 when he was an assistant coach at N.C. State.
Swepson, whose Elon team will play ASU on Saturday, liked what he saw.
“I was just very impressed with the way they practice, how physical they practice and their attention to detail,” Swepson said.
“I remember watching practice, and every drill they tackled. I asked Coach (Jerry) Moore after practice and said, ‘Coach, are you concerned about guys getting hurt?’ He said, ‘Well, they get hurt they’re not tough enough.’”
Swepson said that he’s tried to incorporate similar traits in his practices.
“That’s something we’re trying to get done here at Elon – to be physical every time you put the helmets and shoulder pads on, even in practice,” he said.
Starting guard Matt Ruff, who sustained a head injury against Western Carolina, is considered questionable for Saturday’s game at Elon. Regan Dufort, a backup tackle, is also questionable with an ankle injury.
Running back Cedrick Baker Boney, who has missed the last four games with an a shoulder injury, could be available for the Elon game. He has been upgraded to questionable.
The Mountaineers are a bit healthier overall than they were midseason, and Moore said that being able to spread out the playing time among a lot of players in last Saturday’s 46-14 victory over Western was helpful.
“We’re 10 games into the season, and we’ve redshirted quite a few kids this year, so we’re a little bit thin in some spots but for 10 games into the season we’re probably about as good (health-wise) as anybody else is,” Moore said.
Two players got their first start and another his first game action for ASU last Saturday against Western Carolina. Running back Steven Miller started in a two-back set, and safety Jamill Lott, a former receiver, made his first start when the Mountaineers opened with five defensive backs.
Miller led the Mountaineers in rushing with 76 yards on 11 carries. Lott had three tackles.
Reserve quarterback Kalik Barnes made his playing debut. He had five carries for 29 yards in fourth-quarter duty.
Brian Quick, who last Saturday became ASU’s all-time leader with 3,227 receiving yards, has been added to the official watch list for the 2011 Walter Payton Award. Quick is one of 20 players under consideration for the award, which is given annually to the top player in the Football Championship Subdivision.
Saturday, November 12, 2011
Appalachian State’s offensive production has been down a bit recently, which is a cause for concern for coach Jerry Moore.
Today’s 553 yards against Western Carolina looked nice, but red-zone struggles continued. Although the Mountaineers were 9 of 9 in red-zone chances, six of the nine trips inside the 20-yard line ended in field goals rather than touchdowns.
Moore said the offensive line is young, and perhaps not controlling the line of scrimmage consistently, but there are other possible factors as well, he said.
“We went through one period this year where blitzes hurt us, and I think we got some of that corrected,” Moore said.
“One thing is that people know a lot more about defending the Spread offense around the country, not just against us. Around the country defensive coaches are more adept at defending Spread offenses than was the case four or five years ago.
“You can look at a team like Florida, which was kind of premier team when Urban (Meyer) came from Utah to Florida, and the next thing you know people were learning how to defend it. We’re a little bit the same way.
“And some of it is our youth. We have some freshmen (up front). Our center (Alex Acey) at this time last year was playing center at Chalkville (Ala.) High School. He hasn’t even been redshirted. The left tackle (Kendall Lamm) is a kid that’s been on scout team all last year. So some of it is youth.
“But a lot of it is just executing and putting our offense in the right situation, making the right calls and things like that. We’re struggling with it a little bit and we’ve got to get it corrected. It’s not in our nature to make a bunch of excuses. We’ve got to bear down and get it fixed.”
The Mountaineers got tackle Kendall Lamm back from an ankle injury today, but lost guard Matt Ruff in the first half as result of a head injury. Ruff will be evaluated Monday.
Wednesday, November 09, 2011
Georgia Southern and Wofford have the inside track to the Southern Conference title, but here’s one interesting scenario that isn’t out of the question:
If Georgia Southern loses at Wofford on Saturday; and then if Wofford loses at Chattanooga on Nov. 19; and if ASU and Furman win their remaining league games…
There would be a four-way tie for first place, which would be a first in SoCon history. And Furman would be the automatic qualifier for the NCAA Football Championship Subdivision playoffs as result of a head-to-head tiebreaker.
Regardless of who wins the SoCon title – whether it’s Georgia Southern (which needs to beat Wofford), or Wofford (which needs to beat Georgia Southern and Chattanooga), or if ASU or Furman wind up with a share after all – there is a distinct possibility that all four teams will wind up in the playoffs.
If the SoCon gets four teams in, that would be another first for the SoCon. Of course, recent playoff expansion that allows for two more at-large teams has aided the possibility.
A couple more tidbits…if ASU winds up with a share of this year’s title, it won’t be the first time it has done so with two league losses. The Mountaineers tied with Wofford for first place at 5-2 in 2007… Never have four teams shared the league title. In fact, the only three-way tie happened in 1999, when ASU, Furman and Georgia Southern tied at 7-1.
Of course, Georgia Southern could make it all simple on Saturday.
Saturday, November 05, 2011
Appalachian State’s 20-10 loss to Furman today didn’t end its chances of an unprecedented seventh straight Southern Conference championship, but it significantly damaged them.
Georgia Southern, which barely survived The Citadel’s upset bid today, can wrap up a SoCon title with a victory at Wofford on Saturday.
There is still a possibility of a multiple-team tie for first place, however, which would give ASU a share of the title.
Wofford (5-1) would need to beat Georgia Southern (6-1) and lose its final regular-season game at Chattanooga. In that situation, ASU (4-2) could tie if it closes with wins over Western Carolina and Elon. Furman (5-2) could also tie if it beats Elon.
Coach Jerry Moore of ASU said that his team, which was hindered by turnovers in the early stages against Furman and fell behind 20-0, was “down and hurting” after its comeback bid fell short.
“They’ve got a lot invested,” Moore said. “I told them, I was pretty blunt about it, that our chances of tying for a conference championship are probably not very realistic. But we’ll find out how resilient we are and I think we’ve got a good football team.”
ASU ran 83 plays – 32 more than Furman – and led in total yardage 399-365. The Mountaineers also led in possession time by 12:30, moved the ball relatively well and wound up 12 of 18 on third-down conversions.
But the Mountaineers hurt themselves with four turnovers, and seldom cashed in when they were in scoring position. They scored just once in their first five trips inside Furman’s 25-yard line.
The Paladins, who were penalty free, limited the Mountaineers in terms of big plays but came up with a few timely big gainers of their own.
Although big-play receiver Brian Quick was limited, two ASU receivers had career days. Andrew Peacock caught eight passes for 79 yards. Tony Washington caught seven for 59 yards.
Quick did move within eight yards of ASU’s all-time receiving yards record of 3,124 held by Rick Beasley, who played from 1978 through ’80.
Former quarterback DeAndre Presley saw time at both wide receiver and on kick and punt returns. Presley had two receptions, and returned a kickoff 40 yards.
Travaris Cadet was a workhorse for the Mountaineers. He had 24 carries for 63 rushing yards, caught six passes for 60 yards and returned a kickoff for 28 yards.
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