Mornin' from the porch. Zeb Coldiron here, notebook in my lap, black and gold twine around it, and a cup of coffee going cold because I keep getting up to look at the ridgeline. The leaves are turning in Watauga County, the wind has a bite to it, and Thursday night a team with a zero in the loss column is driving up our mountain. Slow down, the view's worth the wait. Let's take this hike one switchback at a time.
Part 1: Friday Night at the Beach
Last Friday, Oct. 16, App State went down to Conway, S.C., and beat Coastal Carolina 35-32 at Brooks Stadium in front of 19,485 people. It was not a stroll on the boardwalk. It was a climb with loose gravel.
Coastal hit us first. Deuce Bailey threw a 21-yard touchdown pass to Tristian Gardner to open the game, and I wrote "steady" in my notebook, because that's what you write when you're nervous. Then Jaquari Lewis went to work. He scored from 12 yards out to tie it, and then Malachi Singleton drove us 88 yards in eight plays, capped by Lewis's 1-yard plunge for a 14-7 lead after one quarter.
The second quarter was the foggy part of the trail. Bailey hit Robby Washington for 71 yards, then found Ben Verges for 8 yards with 1:53 left before the half. A fumble with 12 seconds left set up a 58-yard field goal by Nico Cavanillas Alti, a career long, and Coastal led 24-14 at the break. Credit to that young man. That kick would have cleared most of the hills in South Carolina, which, to be fair, is not a long list.
Then the view opened up. Lewis ran in from 12 yards midway through the third. Devin Henderson picked off Bailey, and 10 plays later Lewis scored from 3 yards out for a 28-24 lead. Four rushing touchdowns for Jaquari Lewis: 12, 1, 12 and 3 yards. That's a man who knows the way home.
And here's the part of the story I'll be telling at the general store all winter. Henry Hasselbeck, a junior backup, came in and ran 21 times for 125 yards. He also completed 9 of 12 passes for 112 yards, and his first career touchdown pass was a 31-yarder to Sam Pickett III for a 35-24 lead with 6:41 left. Singleton had been sharp before that, 12 of 14 for 151 yards. Two quarterbacks, 21 of 26 together, 516 yards as a team, 253 on the ground.
Coastal scored with 3:11 left, added the two-pointer to make it 35-32, and then our boys ran out the clock. That's mountain football: you hold the ball until the other fella's legs give out. We had it for 33:17. App State is 4-2 and 1-1 in the Sun Belt, and we're back on the trail after that 10-3 home loss to Old Dominion on Oct. 10.
Part 2: The Dukes Come Up the Mountain
Thursday night, 7 o'clock Eastern, on ESPNU, James Madison comes to Kidd Brewer Stadium. Let me be honest, because I'm a porch-honest man: this is the best team in the Sun Belt right now, and the numbers aren't shy about it.
JMU is 7-0 and 4-0 in league play. Last Saturday it beat Georgia State 49-22 in Harrisonburg. Camden Coleman threw two touchdown passes, and George Pettaway ran for 119 yards, his fourth straight 100-yard game. AP reports the Dukes have won 12 straight Sun Belt regular-season games and 11 straight at home. ESPN has them scoring 42.9 points a game and allowing 16.0. Earlier this year they beat Wagner 87-3, which is less a football score and more a ZIP code.
Pettaway has 767 rushing yards and seven touchdowns. Coleman has 13 touchdown passes against one interception. Nakian Jackson leads them with 50 tackles. Respect where it's due. They're a good team. Now pack a jacket, Dukes, because here's what you're walking into.
Our Side of the Trail
Jaquari Lewis has eight rushing touchdowns this season, and four of them came last Friday. Singleton has 1,429 passing yards with seven touchdowns and two interceptions. Sam Pickett III has 411 receiving yards and four touchdowns. Caleb Sandstrom has five sacks, and Colton Phares leads us with 38 tackles. We average 421.7 yards a game. That's a lot of trail for a road team to defend in the dark.
The key is the run game. JMU allows 114.3 rushing yards a game. We just ran for 253 at Coastal, and we did it with two quarterbacks and a running back who kept falling into the end zone like it was the only warm room in the house. If we hold the ball like we did Friday, the Dukes' 42.9-point offense spends a lot of the night on the sideline, zipping up its coat.
A Little History, Kindly Told
I won't pretend last year went our way. CollegeFootballData.com has it at JMU 58, App State 10 in Harrisonburg in 2025. I wrote that one in pencil, and I've been erasing it ever since. But in 2024, the Dukes came to Boone and we won 34-20. The mountain remembers.
And while we're opening the scrapbook: App State won three straight FCS national championships, from 2005 to 2007, the first FCS team to do that since the playoffs began in 1978. On Sept. 1, 2007, we went to Michigan Stadium and beat the fifth-ranked Wolverines 34-32 in front of more than 109,000 people. JMU has two FCS titles, 2004 and 2016, and I tip my cap to both. But it's a little like bringing two jars of apple butter to a church supper where somebody already brought three pies and a Big House.
The Dukes joined the Sun Belt for the 2023 football season. We hosted the very first Sun Belt Championship Game, right here in Boone, on Dec. 1, 2018, and won it. Welcome to the league, neighbors. Mind the stairs.
About That Duke
Here's a piece of history I found on JMU's own centennial website, and I love it. The Dukes aren't named for a duke at all. In 1947, the school's first men's basketball players chose the name in honor of Madison College President Samuel P. Duke. JMU says the players told him they'd name the team after him if he'd provide them with towels and equipment. Now that is a mountain-level deal. Some programs get a nickname from a legend. The Dukes got theirs for a stack of towels.
And then, JMU explains, there wasn't really any way to turn a "Duke" into a mascot, so the school went with an English bulldog, the pet of British royalty. Today the Duke Dog is eight feet tall with a crown and cape. We have Yosef, a mountaineer who dresses for the weather. A bulldog in a cape is a fine thing. But it's going to be windy up here Thursday, and capes catch wind.
Porch Talk: Boone vs. Harrisonburg
Boone. We sit at 3,333 feet above sea level. Wikipedia says an older survey had it at 3,332, and somebody went back and found the extra foot. That's how serious we are about up. Boone has the highest elevation of any town of its size east of the Mississippi River, and we average nearly 25 inches of snow a year, far more than the lowlands in the rest of North Carolina. The town is named for Daniel Boone, who camped here more than once, and every summer since 1952, except 2020, folks have watched "Horn in the West," the outdoor drama about the early settlers, in an amphitheater near town. Our 2020 census population was 19,092, and on a Thursday night in October it feels like every one of them is wearing a jacket and yelling at the same time. Yosef will be there. Yosef is always there.
Harrisonburg. Now, I like Harrisonburg. It's a pretty little independent city in the Shenandoah Valley, and Wikipedia says downtown was named Virginia's first culinary district in 2014. Good for them. A valley is a fine place to eat a meal, and it's a fine place to look up at the mountains from. That's what valleys are for.
But I want to point out how most folks reach it: Interstate 81, the main north-south highway in western Virginia, where you can spend a whole afternoon admiring the back of a tractor-trailer. Our roads to Boone have switchbacks. Theirs have tailgates, and I don't mean the fun kind. I'd rate the drive from Harrisonburg to Boone at about 11 switchbacks once you leave the interstate, and every one of them is a little reminder that the Dukes are heading uphill.
Harrisonburg's 2020 population was 51,814, nearly three Boones. Bridgeforth Stadium seats about 24,877, according to Wikipedia. It was built so it can someday expand past 40,000. That's a valley for you: always planning to grow up. We already did. We just did it vertically.
Steady, Then a View
Here's how I see the hike. JMU is unbeaten, scores a bushel of points and hasn't lost at home since last season. But Thursday isn't at home. Thursday is on a mountain, at night, in late October, in front of a crowd that knows how to make a 7-0 team feel like it's 3-0 and lost. We have a back with eight touchdowns, a quarterback room that just went 21 of 26, and a run game that held the ball for more than 33 minutes on Friday.
Bring a jacket, Dukes. Bring two. And slow down when you come over the ridge. The view's worth it.
My call: James Madison Dukes 35, App State Mountaineers 21.