By Bobby Neal for App State Sports. STATESBORO, Ga. – In a game that saw 13 lead changes and eight ties, the App State men’s basketball team fell to Georgia Southern on Feb. 24, 64-73.

All eight Mountaineers who entered the game contributed to the offense while three scored in double figures. Donovan Gregory led the way with 14 points, five rebounds and a steal.
Gregory and CJ Huntley scored App State’s first 14 points as the Black & Gold jumped out to an early lead.

10 minutes into the contest, Tamell Pearson scored six unanswered points on the block through three consecutive possessions to give his team an eight-point advantage. Pearson finished with 11 points and five rebounds.

The Sun Belt’s top defense held Georgia Southern without a field goal for five minutes leading up to the six-minute mark. The Eagles gained momentum in the final moments before the break, tying the game at 29.

Harcum scored eight points in the first four minutes of the second half as the teams traded buckets for the majority of the final period.

With 12 minutes to go, Pearson hit his first 3-pointer as a Mountaineer to give App State a 50-43 lead. Georgia Southern’s Jalen Finch responded with three consecutive shots from beyond the arc.

Justin Abson blocked his third shot with four minutes to go, increasing his season total to 69, passing Ricky Nedd (67, 1992-93) for the second-most blocks by an App State player in a season.

Gregory scored seven of his 14 in the game’s final minutes as his team took its final lead at the 3:25 mark before playing the foul game.

App State finished its regular season with a record of 16-15 and split its conference games, 9-9.

UP NEXT/SUN BELT TOURNAMENT DETAILS

The Mountaineers finished in ninth place in the Sun Belt, receiving a first-round bye for the SBC Tournament. The Black & Gold will play their first postseason game on Thursday, Mar. 2, against South Alabama at 12:30 p.m. ET. The tournament will take place at the Pensacola Bay Center in Pensacola, Fla. and all games will be streamed live on ESPN+.

By Katherine Jamtgaard for App State Sports. BOONE, N.C. – The App State women’s basketball team defeated ULM 77-63 in its regular season finale on Feb. 24, while honoring Brooke Bigott, A’Lea Gilbert, Janay Sanders and Summer Schloss for Senior Day.

Five Mountaineers recorded double-figure points, led by Sanders’ 15. Sophomore Zada Porter posted her first career double-double, scoring 12 points and pulling down a team-high 10 rebounds. Gilbert and junior Faith Alston netted 11 points each, and freshman Chaé Harris recorded 10 points. Porter and Alston led the team in assists, dishing out four each.

The Mountaineers broke their program record for 3-pointers made in a season, recording nine treys for a total of 223 this season. The previous record was 215, set during the 2018-19 season. App State caused 21 ULM turnovers, scoring 20 points off of those turnovers. The Mountaineers also held the Warhawks to three 3-pointers over the course of the game. Forty of the Black and Gold’s 77 points came from the bench.

Gilbert put App State on the board early with the Mountaineer’s 215th trey of the season, tying the previous program record. Not long after, Porter sunk a 3-point bucket, pushing App State over the record’s edge. Senior Taylor Lewis and Harris drilled back-to-back treys to put App State up 15-13 over ULM in the first period.

App State went on a 9-0 scoring run with contributions from Sanders, Gilbert, and Carver to take a 26-24 lead over the Warhawks. ULM tied things up at 26, but a layup from Porter gave App State a 28-26 edge. A Sanders layup and Alston trey put App State up 33-29 at the half.

Carver opened the third quarter with a trey to extend App State’s lead to 36-31. Gilbert and Sanders promptly added back-to-back layups that put App State up 40-35 over the Warhawks. As the Warhawks closed in on the Mountaineers’ lead, Harris landed a jumper to keep App State ahead 43-40. Carver sunk an effortless trey, which Alston followed up with a layup that extended App State’s lead to 51-43. As the Mountaineers faced a scoring drought, ULM cut the Mountaineers’ lead to one. With seven seconds remaining in the quarter, Porter got to the hoop for two. Harris was quick to jump in for a steal at three seconds, making a last-second layup to put App State up 55-50 at the end of the third period.

The Mountaineers came out hot in the final quarter as Harris drilled a 3-point bucket, which was followed by back-to-back layups from Gilbert and Porter. Frazier, Alston and Sanders contributed to an 8-0 scoring run that extended App State’s lead to 72-58. Bigott and Gilbert scored the Mountaineers’ final five points as they cruised to the home victory.

UP NEXT
The Mountaineers will head to Pensacola, Fla. for the Sun Belt Tournament, Feb. 28- March 6. The tournament bracket will be announced later this evening. App State is projected to take the No. 10 or No. 11 seed and holds the tiebreaker against the current 10th-place team, Arkansas State.

By Matt Present for App State Sports. HIGH POINT, N.C. – App State baseball improved to 5-0 for the first time since 2010, defeating North Carolina A&T 12-8 on Friday night at Truist Point, the professional home of the High Point Rockers.

Austin St. Laurent got the Mountaineers off to a fast start with a two-run double to help give the Mountaineers a 3-0 lead in the first, and they held a 12-1 advantage after seven innings.

Starting pitcher Xander Hamilton improved to 2-0 this season by allowing one run on five hits and striking out nine Aggie batters in 6.0 innings of work.

Hayden Cross led went 3-for-5 with two runs scored and one RBI, while App State also got multi-hit games from St. Laurent (2-for-5, two RBIs, one run scored), Andrew Terrell (2-for-4, two runs, two RBIs), Xavier Moronta (2-for-3, two runs scored, one RBI) and Dylan Rogers (2-for-3, two RBIs, two runs scored).

Singles by Terrell and Moronta preceded St. Laurent’s early double for a 2-0 lead, and he scored on a two-out single by Rogers.

The Mountaineers got the bats going again in the third inning with five runs on seven hits, as Golston Gillespie reached on a one-out double and scored on a Rogers single. Terrell followed an Alex Aguila double with a two-run single and scored on a Moronta single. Cross’ RBI single gave App State an 8-0 lead. It added three more runs in the sixth and one run in the seventh.

North Carolina A&T (3-2) started a late rally by scoring seven runs in the bottom of the eighth inning to cut the deficit to 12-8. Jake Beaty induced consecutive groundouts before Skylar Brooks, who entered with a four-run lead, ended the frame by forcing another groundout to strand one runner.

Brooks opened a scoreless ninth with a strikeout and allowed no runs in 1.1 innings.

App State will face off again with North Carolina A&T in game two of the series at War Memorial Stadium in Greensboro, N.C. tomorrow at 3:00 p.m. Right-hander Bradley Wilson will make the start for the Mountaineers. He will be opposed by lefty Daniel Carter.

STATISTICAL HIGHLIGHTS

• APP Hayden Cross (C): 3-5, 2 runs scored, 1 RBI, 2B
• APP Andrew Terrell (3B): 2-4, 2 runs scored, 2 RBIs, 1 stolen base
• APP Dylan Rogers (RF): 2-3, 2 runs scored, 2 RBIs
• APP Xavier Moronta (DH): 2-3, 2 runs scored, 1 RBI
• APP Xander Hamilton (SP): 6 IP, gave up 5 hits, 9 strikeouts, 1 earned run, faced 23 batters; picking up the win gets him to 2-0 on the season
• NAT Tre Williams (DH): 2-4, 1 run scored, 1 RBI
• NAT Cort Maynard (1B): 2-5, 1 run scored, 2 RBIs, 2B
• NAT Luke Brown (SP): 3 IP, gave up 8 earned runs, faced 22 batters, credited with loss, record goes to 0-1 on the season

By David Rogers. BOONE, N.C. — A whopper of a 3-week, non-conference series beckons High Country football aficionados in September, judging by the just-released 2023 Appalachian State schedule.

Before getting to that all-BCS level series, the Mountaineers host an in-state, FCS rival in  Gardner-Webb, on Sept. 2. The Bulldogs are not to be taken lightly after winning the Big South Conference championship in 2022, going undefeated (5-0) in league play. Overall, they were 7-6, but that also included narrow losses to the likes of Coastal Carolina (31-27), Elon (30-24), and Liberty (21-20). There is also a roundabout connection between GWU and App State: the Bulldogs head coach is Tre Lamb, whose cousin, Taylor Lamb was a record-setting quarterback for the Mountaineers and is now the QB coach at University of Virginia.

After hosting Gardner-Webb, App State gets into a challenging 3-game series starting with a visit to North Carolina on Sept. 9. Who can forget the woulda-coulda-shoulda comeback rally and narrow loss to the Tar Heels in their last encounter, in Kidd Brewer Stadium?

On Sept. 16, the Mountaineers welcome East Carolina to The Rock. It was only a couple of years ago (2021) that App State all but walked over the Pirates at Bank of America Stadium in the nationally-televised, season-opening Duke’s Mayo Classic, 33-19. The Pirates will be looking for revenge in what is likely to be a sold-out, standing room only encounter at Kidd-Brewer Stadium.

One of the more interesting matchups on the 2023 schedule comes on Sept. 23, when App State goes on the road to play Wyoming, in Laramie, Wyo. Founded in 1886 as a public land-grant institution, Wyoming has a storied athletic history with some notable football alumni, including current Buffalo Bills QB Josh Allen, former San Diego Chargers WR Malcolm Floyd, former Miami Dolphins RB Jim Kiick, former New York Giants safety Derrick Martin, former Dallas Cowboys tight end Jay Novacek, among several others.

No sooner do the Mountaineers return home from Wyoming than they have to make another road trip, this one to the Deep South and a Sun Belt Conference season opener at Louisiana-Monroe. Other Sun Belt road games include at Old Dominion (Oct. 21) in Norfolk, Va., at Georgia State (Nov. 11) in Atlanta, and at James Madison (Nov. 18), in Harrisonburg, Va.

Home Sun Belt games include the only mid-week contest, on Tuesday, Oct. 10, vs. Coastal Carolina. The Mountaineers host “Homecoming” on Oct. 28 vs. Southern Miss and a week later have Marshall coming to town, on Nov. 4. They close out the regular season with a home game vs. Georgia Southern.

2023 SCHEDULE
Sat., Sept. 2 vs. Gardner-Webb
Sat., Sept. 9 at North Carolina
Sat., Sept. 16 vs. East Carolina (Family Weekend)
Sat., Sept. 23 at Wyoming
Sat., Sept. 30 at ULM*
Tues., Oct. 10 vs. Coastal Carolina*
Sat., Oct. 21 at Old Dominion*
Sat., Oct. 28 vs. Southern Miss* (Homecoming)
Sat., Nov. 4 vs. Marshall*
Sat., Nov. 11 at Georgia State*
Sat., Nov. 18 at James Madison*
Sat., Nov. 25 vs. Georgia Southern*

HOME GAMES IN BOLD
* Denotes Sun Belt Conference game

By Bobby Neal for App State Sports. ATLANTA, Ga. — App State men’s basketball dominated from start to finish against Georgia State on Feb. 22, completing the season sweep of the Panthers, 78-52.

The Mountaineers posted their largest road win since Jan. 31, 2005, when App State took care of Longwood, 89-59.

App State made 14 of its 21 3-point attempts (Christopher Mantis and CJ Huntley combined for 10-of-14), the team’s best shooting performance from “downtown” since Feb. 11, 2011, when the Mountaineers made nine of 13 threes in a win over High Point.

The Black & Gold recorded 20 assists, the most of any contest against a Sun Belt opponent this season. Xavion Brown had six of those to go along with his nine points and six rebounds.

Mantis led the team in scoring with 22 points on 8-of-11 shooting, followed by Donovan Gregory with 16, Huntley with 14 and Terence Harcum with 11.

Huntley was the star of the first 10 minutes, making four consecutive 3-pointers as his team jumped out to a 22-10 lead at the 12-minute mark of the first half.

The Mountaineers stayed aggressive, posting a halftime score of 42-25. Gregory assisted four shots in the first half, totaling 300 in his career, which is good for 10th all-time at App State.

App State kept its foot on the gas in the final period, out-scoring the Panthers, 36-27. Mantis and Gregory combined for 23 points in the second half.

Defensively, the Mountaineers held Georgia State’s leading scorer, Dwon Odom, to a 25% night. The visiting team held the Panthers to 36.8% from the floor and 23.5% from deep. App State ranks 18th in the nation in field goal percentage defense and leads the Sun Belt.

Justin Abson blocked two shots, increasing his season total to 66. The all-time record at App State for blocks in a season is 75, set by Jeremy Clayton during the 2007-08 season. Ricky Nedd (1992-93) sits in second place with 67, one ahead of Abson.

The Black & Gold will finish their regular season on Feb. 24, 7 p.m. EST, at Georgia Southern. Next week, they will head to Pensacola, Fla. for the Sun Belt Tournament.