Miami U to play Appalachian State in Cure Bowl

OXFORD, Ohio — Miami University football coach Chuck Martin couldn’t help but smile when he reflected on the hurried nature of bowl season.

“Sometimes you have some time to take your breath,” Martin said Friday.

Just not this year.

“Obviously, we’re in the middle of recruiting,” Martin said. “The (transfer) portal opened, high school recruiting. We have our official visit weekend (this past weekend). We’ve got finals (this week). The scheduling is kind of crazy. But, it’s bowl season — you take whatever.”

The RedHawks are grateful for the opportunity to leave Tuesday morning for Orlando to participate in their third consecutive bowl game. Miami has been bowl-eligible in seven of the past eight seasons.

Miami (11-2) plays Appalachian State (8-5) in the Avocados from Mexico Cure Bowl at 3:30 p.m. Saturday at FBC Mortgage Stadium. The game will be televised by ABC on Bounce. Bounce is available over-the-air on channel WCPO 9.3, or Altafiber channel 258 and Spectrum channel 992.

It is the first meeting between Miami, the Mid-American Conference champion, and Appalachian State, which lost in the Sun Belt Conference championship game.

“It’s a pretty cool matchup,” Martin said. “It’s got two non-Power Five programs that got a pretty awesome history and tradition. Our history and tradition is pretty amazing. Their history and tradition is pretty amazing. So should be a great game if both teams play well.”

It’s been a memorable journey for Miami, which has an opportunity to earn the second-most wins in a season in program history. The 12 wins would just be shy of the 2003 squad which earned 13 wins behind the leadership of former NFL quarterback Ben Roethlisberger.

“We’re trying to get in some select company,” Martin said.

The RedHawks have earned that opportunity. Miami has won five consecutive games since starting quarterback Brett Gabbert suffered a season-ending injury. Aveon Smith helped to lead Miami to the Mid-American Conference title before he entered the transfer portal.

Martin said Friday that redshirt quarterback Henry Hesson will start Saturday while redshirt sophomore Maddox Kopp will see playing time.

“We’ve had a lot of bumps in the road along the way — all the way back to the beginning of the season,” Martin said. “Every time it seems like it wasn’t going to go our way somebody would make a play and we survived and we’ve been doing that for 13 weeks.”

Several aspects of this Miami team have succeeded including in special teams. That includes the fact that junior kicker Graham Nicholson, a Summit Country Day graduate, won the Lou Groza Award this past weekend.

Redshirt sophomore running back Rashad Amos has rushed for 895 yards with 13 touchdowns to lead Miami’s offense, and the team’s defense ranks seventh nationally, allowing 16.2 points per game. The RedHawks give up only 197.2 passing yards per game.

Redshirt junior linebacker Matt Salopek earned MAC Defensive Player of the Year honors.

“We’ve had a lot of goals that we’ve accomplished this year,” Salopek said. “Beating Cincinnati, beating OU (Ohio University) — two of our rivals — and then heading up and winning in Detroit. It’s been a long journey. We’ve had a lot of ups and downs but it’s been very rewarding and we’ve learned a lot of things throughout the entire year.”

Appalachian State, which lost to Troy in the Sun Belt Conference championship game, is led by several players including junior quarterback Joey Aguilar who has thrown for 3,546 yards and has a school-record 33 touchdown passes. Edge rusher Nate Johnson was named a first-team Freshman All-American by The Athletic.

“They’re a twitchy athletic group,” Martin said. They’ve got speed on both sides of the ball. They’re really aggressive on defense. Offensively, they’re really explosive.”

Salopek is looking forward to the challenge. Martin said he’s proud of the resilience the RedHawks have shown all season. It’s why he’s looking forward to his 11th season in 2024 with a potential opportunity at the College Football Playoff.

“We’re excited; we’ve got an incredible nucleus coming back,” said Martin. “And we’ve got we think a really good recruiting class coming in. Obviously we had a really good team this year.”