From the
Anchor Desk
Tuesday, October 1, 2013
By Brian
Bailey WNCT-TV 9 Sports
Director |
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Pirates over the hump
By
Brian Bailey
©2013 Bonesville.net
All rights reserved.
Shane Carden entered Kenan Stadium in Chapel Hill on
Saturday with a big smile on his face.
He looked like he knew what was coming.
It was the look of confidence and of appreciation. Carden
knew that if he executed he would have a big day. He also very much
appreciated the show of support from the Pirate faithful from that
corner of the stadium near the East Carolina locker room.
Carden orchestrated the Pirate offense to perfection in
the 55-31 victory over North Carolina.
He ran for three touchdowns and threw for three more. He put on a
performance that ranks with any quarterback in Pirate football history.
“We came out here and my whole mind set was no fear,”
said Carden on the field after the Pirates win. “We had no fear about
who we were playing and no fear about where were playing and no fear
about what was around us. The noise and negative talk didn’t matter.
This was for Pirate Nation. We know how much this means to our school,
our university, Greenville as a city and it’s an awesome feeling.”
Carden was an obvious selection for the Conference USA
Offensive Player of the Week with his six touchdown performance against
the Tar Heels.
His other weekend honors ran down like thiss:
• Capital One Cup Impact Performance Nominee
• College Football Performance Awards (CFPA) National
Performer-of-the-Week
• College Sports Madness C-USA Player-of-the-Week (second
time this season)
• Davey O’Brien Honorable Mention Player-of-the-Week
• Earl Campbell Tyler Rose Player-of-the-Week
(second-time this season)
• ESPN Primetime Performer
• ESPN Helmet Sticker
Pirate coach Ruffin McNeill also had high praise for his
junior quarterback and team leader.
“We want to get as many of those guys in our program,”
said McNeill. “They’re called self-motivated student-athletes. I love
motivating because everyone is not trained the same. Everybody learns
differently. He definitely has the ‘Coach me, Coach’ mentality.”
Last week I wrote that the Pirates
needed to take a chip on their shoulder
to Chapel Hill. They did more than that.
This was as dominating a performance as I’ve seen from an
East Carolina team in some time.
Coach McNeill needed a win like this. He most certainly
got one.
Now the trick is to rope everybody back in, to win the
next game.
Up next is Middle Tennessee, a program coached by former
ECU assistant Rick Stockstill. Stockstill could have very easily been
the successor to Skip Holtz before McNeill was hired. The ECU job
belonged to Rick Stockstill before Stockstill pulled his name out of the
running.
Coach Ruff remembers it this way.
“I was talking to Mississippi State,” he explained. “I
was getting set to visit with Coach (Jim) Harbaugh at Stanford. I saw
Stock. … He was going places and I was going places. I wished him luck.
I was at Stanford when I got my call.”
“Stock would have fit in well here. But I’m a Pirate and
I fit in a little better,” added McNeill.
Funny how things go, isn’t it?
Now, Ruffin McNeill takes his Pirates to Murfreesboro for
game two of the Conference USA slate.
McNeill’s 24-hour rule was in effect to start the week.
The entire program has to put the win over North Carolina on the
sideline and focus in on ‘the next game’ week after week as seven of the
eight remaining regulars season contests are against C-USA foes.
It’s never personal for the Pirate coach. It’s about the
players, the ones that worked so hard to make a win like this possible.
“The locker room was the most gratifying thing to me,”
said McNeill. “It’s a sacred place because it’s the greatest laboratory
for human behavior. When the program wins, the university wins. When the
university wins, Pirate Nation wins.”
Deep down, Ruffin McNeill knows.
Pirate Nation won a big one on Saturday.
BB
E-mail Brian Bailey.
PAGE UPDATED
10/01/13 04:30 AM.
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