Appalachian State's coaches hit the recruiting trail Tuesday, two weeks earlier than they had hoped or expected.
Coach Jerry Moore took off for Virginia and, of all places, was driving around Richmond yesterday. That's the home of the Richmond Spiders, the team that sent the Mountaineers to a premature playoff exit last Saturday.
"Whoever would have thought that?" said Moore, who was next headed for South Carolina. "But we're all out on the road recruiting -- from Virginia to Pennsylvania to down in Florida. We haven't been able to recruit before Christmas the last three years because of the championship run.
"I'd a whole lot rather be getting ready to play somebody else, but anyway.…"
Richmond ended Appalachian's three-year run of NCAA Football Championship Subdivision titles with a 33-13 victory in the quarterfinals. The Mountaineers had seven turnovers in that game.
Quarterback Armanti Edwards threw five interceptions and had a season-low eight rushes for just 3 yards. Moore said that Edwards was limited by injuries.
"He wasn't 100 percent, that's for sure," Moore said. "I think anybody that has seen him play knows that. He had a hip pointer that he got about three weeks ago, and he hurt a knee -- it wasn't anything that is a surgical kind of a deal but just aggravating -- and … it bothered him a little bit more than it had in the past.
"He threw a couple of bad balls. A couple of them he threw off his back foot. He did the same thing against S.C. State (in the first round) trying to throw the ball away, and he just didn't have anything on it. Some of that was the hip pointer.… He couldn't really throw the ball with the velocity that he wanted to."
Moore said that losing because of turnovers made the loss even tougher to accept.
"I wouldn't take one thing away from the effort of the Richmond kids. They made those turnovers happen," Moore said. "But I think if we had played good and gotten beat, you probably could accept it a little bit more. They scored 21 points off a possession at the 2, a possession at the 4 and a possession at the 15. That just hadn't been us. We've always taken pretty good care of the ball. It was just one of those bad afternoons, and they played awfully well."
The Mountaineers will be expected to be in title contention next season with the return of all but four primary starters. Moore said that doesn't guarantee success, however.
"We've got a lot of players coming back, but I don't think you can stay status quo and think just because you've got a lot coming back, you'll be good," Moore said. "You've got to go work harder, and I know staff-wise we've made a commitment to work harder than we've ever worked."
■ Tommy Bowman can be reached at 727-7320 or at tbowman@wsjournal.com.
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