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AD's hope: Break even in C-USA

By Al Myatt
©2009 Bonesville.net
All rights reserved.

Terry Holland

Mack McCarthy

(Photos: ECU SID)

East Carolina slipped to 1-61 all time in basketball competition against ACC schools with an 80-63 loss to Clemson in Williams Arena at Minges Coliseum on Wednesday night.

The outcome was certainly in keeping with the Pirates' basketball tradition or lack thereof. ECU dropped to 4-6 going into a Saturday night game with St. Andrews in Greenville. The Pirates haven't had a winning season since 1996-97.

The irony of the situation is that ECU athletic director Terry Holland is a basketball man. A star player at Davidson, he later coached the Wildcats and made two trips to the Final Four when he was directing the program at Virginia.

Despite Holland's background, the culture of ECU athletics is steeped in football. Only 4,841 showed up to see what the Pirates could do against the Tigers, ranked No. 24 in the ESPN/USA Today coaches poll.

A jumper by Jamar Abrams gave ECU a brief 2-0 lead but the Tigers answered with a three-pointer by Tanner Smith and Clemson expanded the lead to 14-4 less than five minutes into the non-conference contest.

Trailing 46-29 at the half, ECU played the Tigers even in the second half with each team scoring 34 points. Holland is well aware of the Pirates' struggles in hoops and the disparity with ECU's performance in some other sports, notably football and baseball.

"The first thing we have to do is be competitive, even in games like this against Clemson, and that's awfully hard to do," Holland said Wednesday night. "They're a talented, very athletic team. They play a style that makes it very difficult to stay in the game with them unless you're having a good game and being able to break their pressure.

"That's a tough nut. It's hard to measure ourselves against this particular team or even a Wake Forest with the tremendous size that they had. It's going to be hard to evaluate until we get into the conference season."

Mack McCarthy is the third basketball coach in the Holland era, which began in the fall of 2004. McCarthy is the second hoops coach to be hired during Holland's administration. McCarthy is a proven winner, but at ECU there seem to be more questions than answers at the moment.

The presence of Holland and McCarthy has resulted in four trips to Greenville by ACC teams over the last three seasons. ECU took its only win over an ACC team by topping N.C. State 75-69 under McCarthy's guidance on Dec. 8, 2007.

McCarthy said following the latest loss to the Tigers that he has seen potential for improvement in practice. The unfortunate aspect of that promise was that it was obscured by Clemson's defensive pressure and offensive execution on Wednesday night. There was little carryover from practice to game performance for the Pirates.

"I've told Mack all along that the November and December games only count in terms of getting us ready for conference play," Holland said. "We've got to start breaking even at least in conference play. That's our goal and then build on that — be competitive in the conference and then use that as a springboard to be competitive in the non-conference games against some of the so-called big boys in the area."

PAGE UPDATED 12/17/09 04:49 AM.

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