|
Game
Slants
Sunday, October 21, 2007
By Denny O'Brien |
 |
Pirates stumble in unfamiliar
role
By
Denny O'Brien
©2007 Bonesville.net
All Rights Reserved.
GREENVILLE — There’s a reason behind that
figurative limp that East Carolina displayed exiting Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium
Saturday. For one of only a few times in the heated history of the ECU-N.C.
State football series, the shoe was squarely on the other foot.
Judging by the Pirates’ 34-20 loss to ACC
neighbor N.C. State, it proved an uncomfortable fit.
Unlike most meetings between the programs,
it was the Pirates who entered the game wearing the infrared target. Instead
of the familiar hunter role, ECU played the part of the hunted, with far
more at stake than its wounded opponent.
The Pirates entered Saturday riding a
three-game win streak filled with emotional nail-biters and last-second
thrillers. It generated the type of buzz around Greenville that hasn’t
existed since 2001 when ECU opened the season with aspirations of a
Conference USA title and on many preseason Top 25 lists.
But in the year of the upset, should this
have come as a big surprise? In a year when Stanford beats Southern Cal and
a day when Vanderbilt beats South Carolina, is this a major shock?
Certainly not when you consider the
seven-week gauntlet that led into Saturday.
“At some point, yeah I worry about playing
eight weeks in a row,” Pirates coach Skip Holtz said. “At some point, I
worry about the emotional games that we’ve been in for eight weeks in a row.
“It hasn’t been just eight straight weeks,
it’s been the quality of the opponent and the level of competition of the
games. All of them have come down to the wire. At some point you get drained
a little bit.
"I’m certainly not using that as a crutch,
but I would have loved to have had some time to get the players to get their
legs up underneath them.”
It surely couldn’t have hurt. And perhaps
it would have better prepared the Pirates for the new role they inherited
with Rob Kass’s one-yard plunge last week in El Paso.
That moved the Pirates to 4-3 overall and
in position to make a memorable run. It was enough to send both the fans and
media into a frenzy of speculation in which 10 and 11 wins were being
pondered.
That’s new territory for this ECU bunch. It
partly explains why this winded group performed nothing like one with double
digit wins in its future.
Otherwise, there wouldn’t have been a
botched exchange between quarterback Patrick Pinkney and running back Chris
Johnson. Nor would there have been a first quarter jailbreak that produced a
blocked punt — the second ECU has surrendered this year.
“Unfortunately, we couldn’t pull this one
out in the second half,” Pirates quarterback Kass said. “I thought our
defense played great today. They gave us the opportunity time and time again
to put the ball in the end zone.
“Unfortunately we couldn’t get it done. You
look at a handful of plays here and there, one way or the other, and we feel
like this game is a completely different game. I give all the credit to N.C.
State’s defense. That didn’t look like a 1-5 team.”
That’s for certain.
If the Wolfpack did one thing, it
successfully limited ECU’s most dangerous playmakers almost to the point of
irrelevance. Running back Chris Johnson and receiver Dwayne Harris had
little impact after carrying major loads during the Pirates’ three-game
winning streak.
State’s pursuit and solid tackling in space
kept the Pirates’ big-play offense from ever taking flight. The Pack forced
the Pirates to score with extended drives, which right now is hardly a
comfort zone.
And if State’s defense performed nothing
like a 1-5 team, its offense wasn’t far from it. Quarterback Daniel Evans
picked apart East Carolina’s porous secondary en route to a 335-yard,
three-touchdown day.
That he is the least talented passer the
Pirates have faced served as a painful reminder of where East Carolina rests
with one-third of the season remaining.
Though ECU is in solid position to contend
for the Conference USA crown, it has hardly reached the point to where it
can expect to win just by showing up. The Pirates’ defense — especially
against the pass — makes them vulnerable regardless of the opponent. And
while the offense has made strides with its big-play ability, it doesn’t
boast the type of consistency you would like at this stage in the season.
Even so, the Pirates should be firmly
favored in each of their remaining games against a weak lineup of C-USA’s
bottom feeders.
If a league title is in ECU’s future, it
must adapt quickly to its new role.
Send
a message to Denny O'Brien.
Dig into Denny
O'Brien's Bonesville archives.
10/21/2007 04:48:48 AM |
