by LINDSEY HUNTSINGER
Sports Reporter

The Appalachian State Mountaineers continued their undefeated Southern Conference run with a 52-27 trouncing of the Furman Paladins Saturday.

After a performance that pleased Appalachian’s offensive and defensive coaches, the team has to now move on to prepare for their next SoCon opponent, UT-Chattanooga.

“I thought we started off playing really well, especially in light of the fact that they threw some new personnel and formations at us that we hadn’t repped one time,” defensive coordinator John Wiley said. “Overall, I was pleased. We’re making that progress that we need to make in the conference to become the kind of team we need to be.”

In the offseason the Mocs acquired a new head coach, Russ Huesman. Huesman is a Chattanooga graduate who spent the last five years as defensive coordinator for the Richmond Spiders.

The Spiders won the Football Championship Subdivision national championship, and knocked the Mountaineers out of the playoffs during the 2008 season.

“[Their head coach] feels like he’s got the recipe to stop us,” quarterbacks coach Brad Glenn said. “We didn’t play well against [Richmond] last year, but he had a pretty good plan as far as stopping our offense. He probably feels, in his mind, like he has the right formula to do it.”

Huesman has rearranged the Chattanooga program, and introduced new elements that are helping the Mocs to an improved season that is boosting the morale of team members.

“He brought in some new faces, and he’s playing some young guys and some transfers,” Wiley said. “He’s got them playing harder. They’ve got confidence in what they’re trying to get done and they’ve got confidence in themselves.”

Huesman’s newly instilled confidence and work ethic has transformed this season’s Chattanooga team, and helped them develop an attitude opposed to quitting.

“It’s not going to be the Chattanooga teams of the past, where something bad happens and they’re likely to fold their tent,” Wiley said. “These guys are going to compete and they’re going to be sound, and they’re going to play hard.”

The dominance of the Appalachian offense, led by senior quarterback Armanti Edwards, has been the focus of the SoCon as of late.

“You can’t ask for anything more from them,” freshman linebacker Justin Lloyd said. “Maybe they could score a little quicker, so we could chill a little bit earlier, but you really can’t ask for anything more.”

As they prepare for Chattanooga, the Mountaineer offense must try to maintain the quality they have been able to achieve this season against a Moc defense that has 507 tackles and 23 sacks in 2009.

“It’s hard to maintain that level for 10 or 11 games. It’s just hard,” Glenn said. “You feel like sooner or later there’s going to be a drop off, but we just have to keep pushing them in practice and really stress execution during practice, and just hope that continues and carries over into the game week after week.”

The Moc offense is averaging 23.1 points and 314 yards of total offense per game, compared to Appalachians’ 39 points and 513 yards per game.

Offensive maintenance, as well as defensive consistency, is key to the Appalachian game plan this week.

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