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BAILEY'S
TAKE ON PIRATE SPORTS
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From the
Anchor Desk
Tuesday,
April 5, 2010
By Brian
Bailey |
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Scrimmage leaves
room for interpretation
By
Brian Bailey
©2011 Bonesville.net
All rights reserved.
They say that two people
can view the same car accident and come away with two very different
stories.
One of my best friends
from high school was in town this weekend for the East Carolina football
coach’s clinic. He watched Saturday’s scrimmage and told me that he
“loved” the offense and how smooth things ran, but that the defense was
certainly going to be a work in progress.
Then on Sunday, the local
headlines read “Defensive Dominance.”
After reading the story on
the scrimmage and listening to my friends report, I’d say both got it
right in a way.
The offense certainly
piled on the yards, and the quarterbacks were accurate with their short
passes.
The defense forced six
turnovers. This will, however, be a learning experience that will carry
on until summer as this group learns the 3-4 defense.
Still, if the head man is
happy, then it was a pretty productive day for the first scrimmage of
the spring.
“I saw some turnovers that
we want to get on defense,” head coach Ruffin McNeill said after the
scrimmage.
"You always want your
defense to come away with turnovers and for the offense to take care of
the ball," McNeill elaborated, "so that's a tough position to be in."
So, is it a thumbs up or a
thumbs down?
Offensive coordinator
"Lincoln (Riley) talked to the offense about just that (the turnovers),"
said McNeill, "but overall, I was really pleased on both sides of the
ball."
One of the big things
McNeill has emphasized this spring is avoiding flags.
"We emphasized penalties
and we only had three, which I was happy to see," McNeill said. "It is
three too many in our minds, but those are easily correctable."
The Pirates opened week
number three of the spring season on Monday with practice. The squad
will practice again on Wednesday and Friday before conducting the team’s
second spring scrimmage on Saturday.
Right timing for Wright
Four of the five baseball
series in Conference USA this past weekend ended in sweeps.
East Carolina catcher Zach
Wright’s homer in the top of the ninth at UAB on Sunday prevented a
sweep of sweeps in the league.
Wright’s fateful blast,
his second home run of the game, was a three-run shot that
propelled the Pirates past the Blazers 8-5
and salvaged the third and final game of the series.
ECU coach Billy Godwin had
talked all season about trying to win each series. After dropping the
Friday and Saturday games to UAB, that goal quickly changed to finding a
way to take a game.
Conference USA is among
the best baseball leagues in the nation. The league is also balanced
from top to bottom.
The worst case scenario
for any team is to be swept at home. Central Florida was ranked 23rd in
the nation to start the weekend. Twentieth-ranked Southern Miss then
came to town and put three wins on the board against the Knights.
Goodbye national ranking and hello lower tier of the standings.
Rice comes to Greenville
this coming weekend in what could be a make or break series for East
Carolina. The Owls swept Marshall this past weekend, but had to rally
late in two of the three victories to do so.
Unfortunately, ECU's game
with Elon that was rained out last week in Greenville gets sandwiched
into this week on Wednesday. The Pirates
beat a good Elon team 4-3 in ten innings
on March 15.
First though, ECU takes
the bus over to Raleigh today to face North Carolina State. The Wolfpack
is 17-12 on the year, 5-7 in the Atlantic Coast Conference.
The Wolfpack lost two out
of three to Elon earlier this year. The Pack also dropped two out of
three to Duke and was swept by Georgia Tech.
Speaking of the ACC,
Virginia is 28-2 on the season and ranked number one in at least one of
the
national polls. The Cavaliers'
two losses were to Florida State and East Carolina.
BB
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04/05/2011 03:50 AM |
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