Streak snapped: Louisiana falls to Appalachian State 17-7
LAFAYETTE, La. (KLFY)- With two of the top scoring offenses in the country, a lot of people thought this App State vs. UL game would be a shootout, but that was not the case.
It was really a defensive struggle. The UL defense held the App State offense to only 196 rushing yards in the 17 to 7 loss on Wednesday night.
“I mean I don’t think there’s any question that we had a really good plan,” head coach Billy Napier says.
“Certainly we made them execute in certain situations. Third down was huge. We got off the field a number of different times. I thought their quarterback played well when he needed to,” Napier said. “A lot of credit to Zac Thomas. We had a good plan, and our players played well, covered well. We stopped the run at times. And certainly, if we can put some things together on offense, we can have a different outcome.”
“We just have to keep the momentum,” sophomore linebacker Kris Moncrief says. “The defense had to keep the momentum the whole game in order to win. We didn’t pull out a win, but as a defense we handled our business.”
“I think we are definitely improving in relation to last year,” senior linebacker Ferrod Gardner says. “We came out with a very high intensity. This is a run team. We knew we had to stop the run. We knew we had to be gap sound. Trusting your keys allows you to be gap sound. We prided ourselves on that this week. We wanted to fly around on the ball and make tackles for loss and short gains, 2 or 3 yards every run. We knew their main run plays. We just tried to stop them as much as we could. And Coach Roberts allowed us to play fast. The scheme he drew up this week was perfect for us.”
We asked several players what the attitude of the locker room was like following a loss like this, and they said they’re just ready to bounce back.
They’ll get the opportunity to do that against Arkansas State on October 17th.