Sports
Email
Print
ASU is picked to win SoCon
Coaches say league no longer top heavy
ADVERTISEMENT
Published: July 24, 2008
GREENVILLE, S.C.
Appalachian State, which has won three straight national titles in the NCAA's Football Championship Subdivision, was the choice of coaches and media yesterday to win this year's Southern Conference title.
No surprise there. But it's not a given, Coach Jerry Moore of Appalachian said.
For all the national success that the Mountaineers had last season, they lost two conference games and settled for a share of the top spot with Wofford.
"There's always been three or four teams that you expected to have a real chance to win this league," Moore said. "Now there's about six. There are a lot of good football teams in this league, and they all can beat anybody."
That basically happened last season in one of the most log-jammed SoCon races ever.
Six of eight SoCon teams had winning overall records. All six of those teams finished 4-3 or better in league play, and just one game separated first place from the rest.
"One game, and there's a bunch of Southern Conference champions," Coach Mike Ayers of Wofford said.
Armanti Edwards of the Mountaineers, picked by coaches as the preseason offensive player of the year to complement linebacker Pierre Banks' selection as defensive player of the year, said: "One game made the difference. One more win, and Elon or Georgia Southern might have been in. One more loss for us, and we might have been out."
That said, coaches and media had no trouble singling out the favorite.
"Appalachian State is still the team to beat," Coach Chris Hatcher of Georgia Southern said. "They are the team that everybody is shooting for again. We were fortunate to knock them off last year. And that's the thing with this league. No game is a given."
Elon, a program that has made quick strides under second-year coach Pete Lembo, was a consensus pick to finish second behind the Mountaineers.
"Coaches all say this once was a very top-heavy league, with a couple of teams at the top every year and then everybody else just fighting to survive," Lembo said. "It's kind of shifted. Now you have all these teams fighting to be at the top and very few at the bottom. It was exciting to be part of that last year and hopefully we can maintain that."
Another team singled out was Samford, which has moved from the Ohio Valley Conference to become the SoCon's ninth football member. The Bulldogs were picked to finish last in both polls.
"Nobody knows about us, and we're a young football team," Coach Pat Sullivan of Samford said.
"I don't know whether it's right or wrong. We've haven't played anybody yet to find out."
Besides last year's parity, the SoCon also had a landmark season for offensive production. Six teams averaged more than 31.5 points a game, and five ranked among the nation's top 17 in scoring.
"It was an amazing year," Lembo said.
"There were some really, really dynamic players on offense, and coaches did a great job of getting the ball in those players' hands. It was an exciting year. To have six teams scoring over 30 points a game was incredible.
"The league has become more of a spread offense, no-huddle type of league, whereas five years ago it was more of a run-oriented, grind-it-out league. The nature of the offense has changed, and that's a significant contributor to the scoring."
Six players who ranked in the SoCon's top 10 in passing were seniors, and prolific quarterbacks Jayson Foster of Georgia Southern and Duran Lawson of The Citadel have graduated, as have several of last season's top running backs.
"But one of the most explosive if not the most explosive (quarterback) was Armanti," Ayers said. "And he's back. Plus the young quarterback at Elon (Scott Riddle) had a fabulous year."
■ Tommy Bowman can be reached at tbowman@wsjournal.com
Email
Print
