When mating your tarantulas, keep flooding the terrarium - you'll want it moist while mating and feeding but once you see her start to gain size and stop eating, stop flooding and let it dry out a little bit. Flooding is by wetting the soil of your tarantula terrarium to increase humidity but also simulates the rain season, note that this does not mean they must swim tough.
I think the cooling off period was described by some tarantula breeders as an attempt to simulate the cooler months prior to the (Spring) breeding season, which upon warming up this would trigger the mating urge in some instances.
Hope this helps.