After a bye week, App State football will travel to Boise, Idaho to take on Boise State. It will be the furthest the Mountaineers travel in the regular season, with the schools being located over 2,200 miles apart.
“It will be an awesome challenge to travel a long way to go play a really good opponent,” head coach Dowell Loggains said in his weekly press conference.
The program is still mourning the loss of former head coach Shawn Clark, and Loggains said he grew to be good friends with him.
“You get into coaching to impact people, and coach accomplished that mission,” Loggains said. “He touched so many people, and actually became a good friend to me. In a difficult situation, if I ever needed anything, he was great to me and the way he treated me.”
Clark was the head coach in the previous five seasons, and there are players on the current team that he recruited.
“When we got wind of it we had a team meeting and told some of the guys what was going on. You could see it in their faces what coach meant to these guys,” Loggains said.
In their previous game against Southern Miss, the Mountaineers outgained the Golden Eagles 470-389, but 3 interceptions thrown in the red zone cost App State the win.
Other than the turnovers, the Black and Gold’s offense has played at an elite level, ranking 13th in the country in yards per game at 519.7. Boise State stands ahead of them, who sit at 535.7 yards per game.
Boise State has emerged as one of the premier Group of 5 programs since joining the FBS in 1996, winning 13 bowls. This past season, the Broncos were selected as the No. 3 seed in the College Football Playoff, but ultimately lost in the Fiesta Bowl to Penn State.
“Really impressed with their program, have been for a long long time,” Loggains said. “Even in the NFL when we were evaluating players, they’ve always done a really good job in the evaluation process, finding the two or three stars that end up being really good players for those guys.”
The game on Saturday features some of the biggest Group of 5 schools matching up, as the two teams meet for the first time at the FBS level. The game will be broadcasted nationally on FS1, so Loggains said he wants to keep his players focused on the task at hand.
“For us, the most important one is the one you are currently getting ready for. It’s a big one, but so are the last three,” Loggains said.
App State’s game against Boise State will kick off on Saturday at 7:30 p.m. at the Broncos’ Albertsons Stadium. The game will be streamed live on FS1.
