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Bailey's
Take on Pirate Sports
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From the Anchor Desk
Tuesday, September 27, 2005
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By Brian Bailey |
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What a difference a week
makes
©2005 Bonesville.net
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Last week the East Carolina
coaching staff scratched their collective heads and went to work on how to
stop the opposition from running the football.
Mission accomplished.
One week after Wake Forest ran
up and down the Groves Stadium turf on the Pirates, West Virginia could
muster only a whimper.
It was certainly a welcomed
change from the last couple of trips to Morgantown. It wasn’t a win, but for
the defense it was truly something special.
“I think the coaches did a
great job,” said ECU coach Skip Holtz at his weekly news conference on
Monday. “We moved some people around a little bit; we put together some
difference schemes, and changed some things. The players, though, were the
difference.”
The Wake Forest game was too
much like so many other games over the last couple of years for the Pirate
defense. To a man, this squad had seen enough.
“The players were really
looking for the coaching this past week,” Holtz continued. “They were like
what can we do, what can I do? They really want the bad days to end on
defense.”
The defensive unit took a big
step towards that goal on Saturday.
Still, East Carolina didn’t
make enough plays to win. There are no moral victories anymore.
“There aren’t a lot of smiles
around the office,” said Holtz. “We are in a win business, that’s what we
do, and we’re just 1-2. I’m sure, it’s been rewarding to some to be
competitive, but we have to be better then that. We are evaluated with wins
and losses, that’s’ just what our society does.”
Roggeman regimen unleashed
I hope you had a chance to see
or hear Rock Roggeman, the Pirates' linebackers coach, on my weekly show on
Monday night. (If not, you can listen to the
archived version.)
Roggeman runs at eight
cylinders all the time. His enthusiasm is infectious.
“We really stressed to our
guys that they had to stay in their gaps,” Roggeman said on the vast
improvement the defense showed against West Virginia. “We all knew that we
had to get better quickly.”
The Pirates did indeed get
better. It was almost a miraculous transformation. The same team that
couldn’t get a handle on the Wake Forest backs had a strong hold on those
from West Virginia. The defense gave the offense a chance to win the
football game.
The theme to this Pirate
defense continues to be simplicity. It’s sort of like the K-I-S-S theory,
where you ‘Keep it simple, stupid.”
“Coach Donnie Thompson doesn’t
like to say stupid, so he goes with the K-I-L-L deal,” Roggeman said. “It
goes “Keep it likable and learnable.”
Hey, anything that works!
Saluting the real champions
There should be a strong
military presence with a local flavor on Saturday at Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium.
The school is recognizing the armed forces in our area and offering a
special $15 ticket that includes a hot dog and a drink.
“We are honoring the hometown
heroes on Saturday,” said Steve Duncan with Military Programs at East
Carolina. “They are the National Guard. They go and deploy, to Afghanistan,
to Iraq. They are also flying missions for flood relief. They were here
during Floyd and many of them are now in Louisiana helping out there.”
The university sent out 5,000
invitations to members of the National Guard within a 100 mile radius of
Greenville.
We all should salute those
“hometown heroes!”
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02/23/2007 01:32:05 AM |
