Villanova’s Andy Talley expects the playoffs again in 2014

Andy Talley and the Villanova Wildcats won the FCS National Championship in 2009. Credit: Getty Images

Villanova’s Andy Talley has been the head coach of the Wildcat’s football team for 28 season and has seen a little of everything. Sporting a 191-121-1 career record, the Bryn Mawr native has led Villanova to eight conference titles in four different conferences. In 2009, the Wildcats won the FCS National Championship over Montana. The coach recently talked to Metro about everything from recruiting to facing FBS teams, to perhaps joining a major FBS conference.

It sounds like you had a very productive signing day. How are you feeling looking over your incoming freshman class?

I think what happens with the recruiting every year at this level, because you don’t have 25 [scholarships] like the [FBS] schools do, you try to cover the areas where you have players graduating and you have slots. We needed one quarterback and I think we got a really good one early in Zach Bednarczyk, and we needed two offensive line men, one receiver, a slot running back and a true running back. You kind of recruit according to positional integrity.

, 6-2 would have gotten us into the playoffs.

Can close losses like that help a team get hungry and more experienced?

You use it as a motivator. My conversation with the team was that if we had won one one-point gamer we would have been in the playoffs… One of the things we need to accomplish as a program is that when we get into those one, two or three point games we win them.