©2002 Bonesville.net

South Florida shouldn’t be able to sneak into Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium under a cloak of anonymity. The Bulls have only been playing football since 1997 but have come a long way in a hurry.

A 16-13 USF win over Southern Miss on Saturday night should serve as a wake-up call if East Carolina had any tendency to look past coach Jim Leavitt’s program to the game at Louisville the following week.

South Florida isn’t a conference game yet but it represents an opportunity for ECU (2-3) to move toward a bowl eligible total of six wins.

The Bulls won’t be in awe of ECU and 38,000 or so Homecoming fans in Greenville. They’ve already played before 55,817 at Arkansas and 74,432 at Oklahoma this season. Those are the only setbacks for USF in a 4-2 start.

The Bulls dodged a bullet on Saturday night when Southern Miss kicker Curt Jones missed a 43-yard field goal as time ran out that would have sent the game to overtime.

“I allowed for the wind a little bit and it just stayed out to the right,” said a disappointed Jones.

The Pirates need to be ready to play 60 minutes against the Bulls, who will join Conference USA in football for the 2003 season.

“They were a real good fourth quarter football team, having outscored their opponents 66-16 in the fourth quarter coming into this game,” said Golden Eagles coach Jeff Bower.

Make that 73-16 after a reverse to Hugh Smith accounted for USF’s decisive 7-yard touchdown on Saturday night at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Fla., where the Bulls have won 16 straight home games.

That score, set up by a 39-yard punt return by DeAndrew Rubin to the Southern Miss 27-yard line, came with 9:30 remaining. Before that, the Golden Bulls had three field goals by Santiago Gramatica, whose older brothers Bill (Arizona Cardinals) and Martin (Tampa Bay Bucs) are in the NFL

“It was a big win for us, there’s no doubt about it,” Leavitt said. “We sure made it exciting to the end.”

The Bulls wanted to be in position to win at the end, something that had eluded them in a 44-6 loss at Southern Miss in 2000 when the Golden Eagles were ranked No. 17.

“We talked at halftime about getting it into the fourth quarter,” Leavitt said. “Our team battled. We just battled. We battled and fought. Our special teams did a great job.”

ECU coach Steve Logan has said the Pirates will approach their first matchup with the Bulls as though it were a league contest.

“We’re going to treat this like a conference game,” Logan said. “We’ve got to because we’ll be seeing these people every year from now on.”

Leavitt was highly regarded as a defensive coordinator at Kansas State before coming to South Florida to inaugurate the football program there. He’s been the only head coach of the Bulls.

Leavitt, who went to Dixie Hollins High in St. Petersburg, Fla., recruited the Sunshine State while at K-State. As co-defensive coordinator with Bob Stoops, Leavitt guided the Wildcats from 93rd in scoring defense in 1989, the year before he arrived, to second in NCAA Division I-A.

“I think the world of Jim Leavitt,” said former Iowa coach Hayden Fry. “He is a super young man and a super young coach. He is a tireless worker, an around-the-clock guy. He is very meticulous regarding technique. He’s got a very good football mind and is a stickler for details.

“... He is very good with the players. He will demand a lot out of them, but the players expect that. I know Bill Snyder (Kansas State coach) hates to lose him.”

When Leavitt took the South Florida job he was asked where he would reside. His response — “in my office” — has become a well-known statement among Bulls followers in terms of Leavitt’s commitment to the position. Leavitt, who met his wife Denise at Missouri, where he lettered four years in football and baseball, actually resides on Harbor Island in Tampa.

Coach Logan can certainly appreciate the skills of Bulls quarterback Marquel Blackwell, who has the kind of run-throw abilities that Logan has accentuated in his own program. Blackwell completed 20 of 37 passes for 246 yards against Southern Miss with no interceptions. He has 1,133 career rushing yards.

The Bulls have had just one losing season, their first, when they went 5-6 in 1997. Since then they’ve been 8-3 twice (in 1998 and 2001) and 7-4 twice (in 1999 and 2000). They beat Pitt 35-26 last season.

Word has it that the Bulls have a relaxed entrance policy and have taken a large number of non-qualifiers. ECU takes only a few each year and they must be in-state. C-USA has no admissions standards as a league, allowing it individual members to set their own standards. The Bulls’ roster has 92 players from Florida and just eight from outside the state.

South Florida’s athletic director is former Oklahoma All-American Lee Roy Selmon, who played for the Tampa Bay Bucs in the NFL and was admitted to the pro football hall of fame in 1995.

South Florida may not have the longevity of performance or name recognition of its in-state neighbors Miami, Florida State and Florida, but ECU needs to be ready with its “A” game. The compass on the Pirates ship needs to be pointing south, as in South Florida, and ECU needs to go into the game with a much-higher level of intensity and execution than it did at West Virginia after an open date. “Full speed ahead; prepare to board.”

Shifting the focus from Florida to North Carolina, N.C. State showed on Saturday that its is worthy of its top ranking in Bonesville's State Line Power Rankings©. South Carolina maintained its hold on second by rallying past Kentucky. Wake Forest moved up to third with a decisive win over Duke, beating the Blue Devils for a third straight season for the first time since 1972.

Clemson fell to fourth with a loss to a Virginia program the Tigers used to own. Clemson won 29 straight ACC games over the Cavaliers from 1955 to 1989 but Virginia leads that series 7-5-1 since then. Losses by UNC and Duke helped ECU solidify a hold on fifth in the Carolinas among Division I-A programs despite an open date.

Following are this week's rankings and thumbnails of the Carolinas' seven Division I-A programs: