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Game 4: West Virginia 48, ECU 7 |
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Game
Slants
Sunday, September 23, 2007
By Denny O'Brien |
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Pirates uninspiring in
Morgantown
By
Denny O'Brien
©2007 Bonesville.net
All Rights Reserved.
MORGANTOWN, WV – Sooner or later East
Carolina is bound to win a game in Morgantown.
That was my conclusion following the
Pirates’ previous trip to Milan Puskar Stadium, a narrow 20-15 loss in 2005
that sent a scare throughout the Mountain State.
Perhaps it’s a prediction that’s worth
revisiting. After West Virginia’s 48-7 drubbing of the Pirates on Saturday,
a win in Morgantown appears far from imminent.
It certainly won’t happen while the
dazzling duo of Steve Slaton and Pat White is donning West Virginia blue,
carving through the ECU defense with little resistance. Nor anytime ECU
marches an inexperienced, penalty-plagued club onto the unforgiving turf of
Mountaineer Field.
And certainly not when the Pirates play
with the collective enthusiasm and purpose of the crowd at the local Bingo
parlor.
That much was made certain when West
Virginia emptied its depth chart before intermission.
“The way those guys ran, broke tackles,
twisted, turned, I thought they played an excellent game,” Pirates coach
Skip Holtz said. “I thought we played one of our worst games of the year.
“We didn’t tackle very well on defense, and
that’s the thing that we’ve challenged our players with the last couple of
years playing this bunch. We were going to have some open-field
opportunities, we were going to have some challenges, and we were really
going to have to step up. You’ve got to wrap these guys up. They broke
tackles.”
Plenty of them. West Virginia broke tackles
behind the line, between the tackles, and in the open field. The
Mountaineers pushed the pile, ran past it, and on several occasions ran over
it.
The offensive scheme often isolated ECU’s
defenders, and the Mountaineers took advantage each time they generated a
one-on-one scenario. Enough so to amass nearly 400 yards rushing, a
statistic that was slightly suppressed based on West Virginia’s relative
indifference in the final quarter.
Historically, this series has produced its
share of forgettable moments for ECU. There was the 37-17 loss in 2002
during which the Mountaineers rushed for nearly a millennium. And it wasn’t
much better in 2004 when only boredom prevented West Virginia from scoring
60.
But this was unexpected. Despite the fact
that West Virginia was a heavy favorite, few felt the Pirates would be
shipwrecked before the second quarter.
Given the strides the Pirates have made
since Holtz arrived, the days of 40-point blowouts seemed a distant memory.
On an afternoon when ECU reverted to its days of arm-tackling and poor
discipline, it became a painful reality.
So painful that East Carolina more closely
resembled the ensemble that lost 20 games in the two seasons before Holtz
arrived than the one that went to a bowl last year.
“We’ll sit down as coaches and watch the
film and see where we are,” Holtz said. “I think it’s a thing where we
played a Top 5 team in the country today.
“I said we’d learn a lot about our team in
September. Well, you know, we’re not a Top 5 team. We’ve been here three
years, and we’re not at this level.”
That much was known long before East
Carolina unloaded the bus. While the first three performances indicated that
ECU could at least compete against most of its schedule, they also revealed
too many weaknesses that elite teams would exploit.
Now the overriding question is whether or
not the list of mediocre teams awaiting East Carolina can do the same.
While there are no opposing players the
caliber of Slayton, White, or Darius Reynaud remaining on the docket, ECU
has proven that its margin for error remains slim. There isn’t an opponent
on the schedule against whom the Pirates can assume a victory, nor is there
one that presents an unbeatable challenge.
Truthfully, East Carolina is caught
somewhere between a competitive ebb and flow in its gridiron history. In the
fast food culture of college football, it’s not the position ECU partisans
were seeking at this stage.
But that’s the only conclusion following
Saturday’s demoralization in Morgantown.
Looking back at similar performances
against West Virginia, it’s unfair to compare East Carolina’s program now
with those then. The coaching staff and personnel have experienced a
significant upgrade, while the overall mentality within the program is
infinitely better.
Even so, ECU’s uninspiring effort Saturday
was nothing short of a time-warp performance.
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09/23/2007 01:36:01 AM |
