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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Mountaineers have been division’s best

Since leading his team into the NCAA Football Championship Subdivision playoffs, Eastern Washington University quarterback Matt Nichols has made it clear he and his teammates want to test themselves against the best.

Appalachian State (10-2) will give Nichols and the Eagles (9-3) that chance Saturday when the teams hook up in a quarterfinal-round playoff showdown that kicks off at 9:05 a.m. PST in the Mountaineers’ Kidd Brewer Stadium in Boone, N.C.

ASU comes in as the FCS’s two-time defending national champion and author of one of the biggest upsets in college football history, having marched into Michigan Stadium back on Sept. 1 and stunned the Wolverines 34-32 in the season opener for both teams.

The fifth-ranked Mountaineers have lost twice since then – to Southern Conference rivals Wofford and Georgia Southern – and did not receive one of the top four seeds into the playoffs. But both their regular-season losses came with sophomore quarterback Armanti Edwards either considerably limited or sidelined by a shoulder injury he aggravated in the win over Michigan.

Edwards started, but played only sparingly, in the 42-31 road loss to Wofford, which went on to tie ASU for the Southern Conference regular-season title and capture the league’s automatic playoff berth. And he watched from the sidelines when the Mountaineers lost at home to Georgia Southern, 38-35.

In the eight games he has started this fall, the 6-foot, 175-pounder has thrown for 1,347 yards and nine touchdowns, while rushing for 1,060 yards and 16 TDs. He is the trigger man in an option-based offense that has averaged 267.5 rushing yards, 201.1 passing yards and a SoCon-best 41.6 points per game.

Edwards emerged as a starter in ASU’s third game of the 2006 season and led his team to 13 consecutive wins and a second-consecutive national title. As a rookie, he threw for 2,251 yards and ran for 1,153 yards and joined Missouri’s Brad Smith (2002) and Texas’ Vince Young (2005) as three of only five players in NCAA Division I history to pass for 2,000 yards and rush for 1,000 in same season.

Defensively, the Mountaineers feature a basic 4-3 alignment and the SoCon’s defensive player of the year in senior safety Corey Lynch, who had a hand in 83 tackles during the regular season and tied for the league lead in interceptions with four.

Along with Lynch, ASU had two other players named to the All-Southern Conference first defensive unit and four named to the first-team offense.

The Mountaineers edged James Madison 28-27 in last Saturday’s home playoff opener, converting on a fourth-and-25 to keep their game-winning scoring drive alive and then recovering a JMU fumble inside their own 10-yard line with nine seconds left in the game.