Appalachian State not using Michigan as rallying cry

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ATHENS, Ga. -- Appalachian State set the gold standard for upsets among NCAA Football Championship Subdivision teams when the Mountaineers opened their 2007 season with a 34-32 win at Michigan, which was ranked No. 5 in the nation.

Armanti Edwards threw for 227 yards and three touchdowns, with two of his scores going to Dexter Jackson, and Edwards also had 62 rushing yards. The Mountaineers sealed the landmark upset when Corey Lynch blocked a 37-yard field-goal attempt on the final play.

Current App State coach Scott Satterfield was the quarterbacks coach in '07 when the Mountaineers became the first FCS team ever to defeat a nationally ranked FBS team, but he has no plans of using that as a rallying cry this week. His struggling Mountaineers visit Georgia on Saturday afternoon.

"I think we're too far away from that," Satterfield said Tuesday. "I mean, there's not anybody on this team that was around during that time. It's a completely different team. Back then, we were coming off a couple of national championships with a lot of the same players that were coming back, offensively and defensively.

"So I just think that was a different era, a different time and different kids."

Satterfield expects the Bulldogs to be ready, pointing out Georgia's 35-1 record at home against nonconference foes since Mark Richt's first season in 2001. Among Georgia's victims have been Clemson ('02), Boise State ('05), Colorado ('06) and Oklahoma State ('07), and it also includes five wins over state rival Georgia Tech.

Georgia's only home loss to a nonconference foe occurred in 2008 against the Yellow Jackets, who rallied from a 28-12 halftime deficit to prevail 45-42.

Richt did not reference App State's win at Michigan on Tuesday, but he has before when preparing for FCS teams. So what will Satterfield say to his team before kickoff?

"We'll let them have fun," Satterfield said. "That's the thing we talked about this week. We're just going to enjoy the experience out there and playing at Georgia in front of 90-something thousand fans. Let's have fun and see what happens."

Talking trash

Quarterback Aaron Murray vowed he would never trash talk when he signed with Georgia in 2009.

"The one time I did in high school, the next play is when I broke my leg," Murray said Tuesday in reference to his senior year in Tampa, Fla. "I thought it was bad karma and that I wasn't supposed to talk trash."

Yet in the final minutes of last Saturday's 23-20 win over Florida, Murray, tailback Todd Gurley and guard Chris Burnette all were flagged for unsportsmanlike conduct. Murray said Tuesday that the Florida game is emotional and that it includes more trash-talking compared to other games.

Murray admitted he had been trash-talking before the penalty and that he had been warned by the official.

"He told me he was going to throw a flag on me if I didn't shut up," Murray said, smiling.

Odds and ends

Gurley practiced again Tuesday, and Richt said he expects the sophomore to be healthy for Saturday. ... Satterfield on being 2-7: "We didn't particularly see the won-lost record coming like this when we started the season. We had a lot of unfortunate things happen early in the year."

Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6524.

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