Appalachian State’s Mountaineers were soundly beaten 34-14 by Georgia Southern Thursday night in a pivotal Sun Belt Conference game played before 19,252 fans in Statesboro, Ga. and an ESPNU television audience.
The nationally 25th-ranked Mountaineers, who were playing their first game as a ranked team at the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) level, will assuredly fall out of the Associated Press (AP) Top 25 with the loss. They had tied for the highest ranking ever for a Sun Belt team, as Troy’s one-week appearance at No. 25 in the AP Poll during the 2016 season is the only other case of a Sun Belt school being ranked in either poll.