Each year, the Raycom Media Camellia Bowl has to live up to the hype of its predecessor.<\/p>\n
The inaugural game was decided in the final 64 seconds. The second game was won by a field goal as time expired.<\/p>\n
There were no last-minute heroics in the 2016 game, just an exciting game that featured a back-and-forth scoring battle that wasn\u2019t\u00a0 decided until a final field goal attempt sailed wide right with 1:48 remaining that allowed Appalachian State to pull out a 31-28 win in front of an estimated crowd of 20,300 at Cramton Bowl on Saturday night.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m really, really proud of our guys,\u201d Appalachian State coach Scott Satterfield said. \u201cWe had so much fight and so much integrity in our football team. They do things right on and off the field and you can\u2019t win close games like this if you don\u2019t do things right on and off the field.\u201d<\/p>\n
Appalachian State finished 10-3, winning 21 games and a pair of Camellia Bowls in their first two years of FBS bowl eligibility.<\/p>\n
\u201cI made the comment every time we scored, they answered, but that\u2019s the mark of a great team,\u201d Satterfield said. \u201cIt was really a wild game, an entertaining game for the fans and for ESPN and everybody watching. It was a great college football game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Toledo finished 9-4, losing the Mid-American West title to Western Michigan 55-35, then to the Mountaineers to put a damper on the 2016 season.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the end of the day we had a chance to go down and tie the game and we just didn\u2019t convert,\u201d Toledo coach Jason Candle said. \u201cFor the most part, I thought we played pretty decent. A lot of credit to App State. Really good defense.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo go 9-4 in a season is something special. We wanted to get a 10th win, but ultimately we had a pretty good season and we\u2019re looking forward to next season.\u201d<\/p>\n
Both of the first two games featured comebacks by one of the participants but that wasn\u2019t the case on Saturday as the score was tied at the end of each of the first three quarters.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was a great Toledo team,\u201d said Appalachian State junior quarterback Taylor Lamb, who won the Bart Starr MVP Award. \u201cWe knew it wasn\u2019t going to be easy, it was going to be a four-quarter battle. I think we\u2019ve embraced that all year. You just have to play four quarters and I think our defense did a great job of shutting them down in the second half.\u201d<\/p>\n
Much of the pre-game focus was on the matchup between Appalachian State\u2019s vaunted defense and Toledo quarterback Logan Woodside, who leads the NCAA with 45 passing touchdowns this season.<\/p>\n
Woodside lived up to the billing, setting a bowl record by completing 69.2 percent of his passes, going 18 of 26 for 247 yards and two touchdowns.<\/p>\n
If Appalachian State was going to win with its offense, most analysts would have concluded, it would have been behind the tailback tandem of Marcus Cox and Jalin Moore. And while Cox did finish with 143 yards and a touchdown on 22 carries to become the only Mountaineer to ever gain 1,000 yards in four consecutive seasons and the 22nd<\/sup> player to reach the 5,000-yard career plateau, he was overshadowed by the feet of his quarterback.<\/p>\n Lamb rushed for a career-high 126 yards and a touchdown on just nine carries, repeatedly turning third-and-long plays into crucial first downs.<\/p>\n The Mountaineers\u2019 first scoring drive featured two third-and-long conversions with Lamb\u2019s arm, another touchdown came on Lamb\u2019s 13-yard run at left end and a third came on Darrynton Evans\u2019 94-yard kickoff return.<\/p>\n Each time, the Rockets answered, never taking the lead but tying the game after every Appalachian State touchdown.<\/p>\n Finally, a Mountaineer drive stalled and freshman Michael Rubino kicked a 39-yard field goal with 5:14 remaining. When the Rockets faced the same situation minutes later, Candle took a delay penalty to set up a 30-yard attempt by Jameson Vest, but the sophomore pushed the kick wide right.<\/p>\n \u201cLet him back up a little bit and trust our players,\u201d Candle said of the decision. \u201cIf we had to go out and do it again, I\u2019d kick the field goal again. Trust in our kicker, trust in our protection and hopefully we make it. That wasn\u2019t the reason we lost the game. Give App a lot of credit. They are a great team. They play a physical brand of football. They come right at you and they force you to make mistakes. They put the pressure on you.\u201d<\/p>\n Satterfield, who defeated Ohio on a last-second field goal last year, figured he still had some Camellia Bowl magic left. As it turned out, he was able to simply run out the clock.<\/p>\n \u201cEven if he had made it, I felt good about it because we had about two minutes left to go down and kick another field goal to win the game,\u201d Satterfield said. \u201cI loved the game, it was a fun game, a back-and-forth game. I enjoyed this one because we never were behind.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Each year, the Raycom Media Camellia Bowl has to live up to the hype of its predecessor. The inaugural game was decided in the final 64 seconds. The second game was won by a field goal as time expired. There were no last-minute heroics in the 2016 game, just an exciting game that featured a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n