SCOTTIE MONTGOMERY Duke Media Relations photo

FOOTBALL Measured change is in the air Scottie Montgomery may not have head coaching experience but that hasn't stopped him from conducting business like a seasoned veteran at the outset of his career at East Carolina. He has put together an impressive set of coordinators and assistants thus far. ... More from Al Myatt...

FOOTBALL Coach Mo's staff expands by two Scottie Montgomery's staff continued to grow on Tuesday as East Carolina's first-year head coach announced the hiring of Middle Tennessee State assistant Geep Wade and Duke staffer Ethan Johnson ... More...

BASKETBALL Fast start lifts Tulsa TULSA, OK — East Carolina struggled early at Tulsa on Tuesday night and absorbed a 55-43 American Athletic Conference loss. The Pirates made just six of 33 field goal attempts and committed 12 turnovers in the first half ... More... Next: ECU at Temple | Saturday, 9 pm | ESPNN

BASKETBALL Black Saturday for Pirate hoops The Pirate women were looking to break a long losing streak. The Pirate men were looking to open league play with a win before a tough stretch of games. Both squads fell short of their winning goals on Saturday. ... More from Brian Bailey... MULTIMEDIA Audio: The Brian Bailey Show The Brian Bailey Show airs on Pirate Radio 1250 on Mondays at 6:30 p.m. Brian's guest this week was ECU assistant AD for football operations Terrell Smith (right): Replay show...

FOOTBALL Pirates lure FIU special teams guru East Carolina head football coach Scottie Montgomery took the next step in putting together his first-year staff on Saturday, announcing the hiring of one of Conference USA's top special teams coordinators. ... More...

BASKETBALL UCF rallies past Pirates GREENVILLE — Central Florida overcame a 10-point second half deficit for a 71-68 win at East Carolina on Saturday night in the American Athletic Conference opener for both teams. ... More...

FOOTBALL Petersen departs La. Tech for Pirates On the eve of officially going on the payroll on New Year's Day as East Carolina's head football coach, Scottie Montgomery swung into action a day early on Thursday by tapping the staff of former ECU coach Skip Holtz for an offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach. ... More...

FOOTBALL Coach Mo's staff starts taking shape Ten days after taking over as East Carolina's head football coach, Scottie Montgomery took the first formal steps on Wednesday towards organizing the program to reflect his blueprint ... More...

BASKETBALL Pirates roll after fast start GREENVILLE — The shooting touch that was missing for East Carolina on Sunday at James Madison was found on Tuesday night in Williams Arena at Minges Coliseum as the Pirates won 98-71 over South Carolina State. ECU (8-5) jumped out to leads of 13-2 and 21-4 against the Bulldogs (5-8). ... More...

By Al Myatt
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It's commonly accepted that people are products of their heredity and environment.

During his first official week on the job, new East Carolina football coach Scottie Austin Montgomery talked about his family and factors that shaped him.

His parents, James and Vera, were hard workers in the Cleveland County community of Waco, near Shelby.

"I'm so proud to be their child," said the former offensive coordinator at Duke, his alma mater, who went on to play and coach in the NFL. "They were wonderful parents. My father was a high school dropout. He was embarrassed about not being able to help my brother (James Jr.) with some homework so he went back and got his GED (general education diploma). Fast forward, a long story short, 10 to 12 years later, he had a doctorate degree. He wrote a few books after that. He also did wonderful things in our community.

"During that time, my mother was exceptional because my father lost some income when he decided to go back to school. My mother at that time was working at a textile mill. ... She was not only a worker there from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. but to make ends meet she also worked at the local Family Dollar.

"I was exceptionally blessed with people who believed in sacrifice. ... I watched them go through life with certain trials and tribulations and come out on the other end of it just because of who they were and their faith in God. ... The things that they had gotten, they worked really hard to get them. ... I wish they were still here. It would be a blessing for them to be able to enjoy Greenville and ECU. ... They were football people. They were people that loved the sport of football. You can't be in North Carolina and not know how great the football is at East Carolina and how people love football. They would have been right at home here."

James Montgomery was a preacher.

"He was tough," Coach Mo said "At the end of the day, he was fair. I appreciated it. ... He had a church there in the community that grew to be a huge church. It started with maybe 100 members and by the time he had kind of risen with success, he had north of a thousand members. He did a good job."

Busing from Waco

The population of Waco was 320 in the 2010 census. Its area was listed at 0.80 square miles.

"It's a small town," Montgomery said. "People now would call it Shelby. I had a Cherryville address but I never lived in Gaston County or any of that. I'm a Cleveland County guy. I was born in Shelby and raised in the community of Waco with hard-working people, with great people, with football people. That's who I am and where I'm from. I went to Burns High, a little bit farther away probably than Shelby from my home. It may be around the same distance but we had to bus in to Burns. It's in Lawndale, North Carolina, which is a good little distance from where I stayed but we bused in. It was great. We had a great football coach there and a great football club there."

Montgomery was on Burns' 1994 NCHSAA 3-A championship team. The Bulldogs defeated Eastern Randolph 21-14 in the state final.

"Ron Greene was the coach," Montgomery said. "He was influential in my life. He was a person that even though ... you did things you thought to be good, he challenged us all to be great. We had a state championship team with three National Football League players on it and a lot of talent that played college football on it. To manage those personalities and to get the absolute most out of all of us and make sure that we graduated and made sure that we were great men, besides the football part of it, which I think he was probably the best linebackers coach I've ever seen. Best defensive coordinator. Best defensive coach I've seen.

"The way he prepared us on a week-to-week basis, I'm glad we don't have to coach against him here. He was fantastic. We won a lot of football games. Of course, won the 1994 state (3-A) championship. I couldn't be more proud to grow up in that system and being under him. If it wasn't for him, I probably wouldn't have ever played football, at least at Burns, I might have been at Shelby. I might have been somewhere else playing but without him being there and the history that he had with some of the players that I knew is probably one of the major reasons I decided to play football."

Greene was a role model.

"You become in awe with the people in your community that are viewed at a higher standard," Montgomery said. "In my community, the pastors and the coaches were held at the higher standard. They were the people who sacrificed most. I didn't want to be a pastor. My father was a pastor. It wasn't that I didn't want to be. I think that's something that you have to be called to happen for you.

"The coaching part of it, I got to see how (Coach Greene) was respected. I didn't know why he was respected until I became a part of his team and to see what he did – cut the grass and fertilize the grass and line the field and clean the weights in the weight room. He was also a biology teacher. He also ran a weight training class. In the summers, he was always there. His wife was a football wife.

"I was a little bit in awe of him. Jim Taylor was the high school coach at Shelby. Jim was the other figure in our community that was huge. Jim and I still speak when I'm back home. He was at my hall of fame induction in Cleveland County. ... Those men have always been people that I looked up to. In high school, I started to think, 'Man, it wouldn't be bad to be a big time high school football coach.' Look at these guys. They've got respect but they give so much to the community. They're everywhere, always being in front of young men and trying to help guys get to the next level.

"By the time I got to college, I met more great people in the football business, great coaches and it continued to grow. I loved them for it. I loved the coaches here in North Carolina, the high school coaches in North Carolina. They mean a lot to me because of what Ron Greene and Jim Taylor, they meant to me. ... It was great to recruit that area when I was at Duke. Being a coach is something special and that's the way I regard it."

Basketball player

Montgomery made a couple of transitions athletically as he grew up. He was a basketball player at the outset. When his focus turned to football, he made a change from defensive back to receiver.

"I really didn't start playing receiver until I got to college," he said. "A lot of colleges wanted me to come play defensive back. I played corner and safety. I was lucky they threw a couple of balls my way. They got tipped up in the air and I caught 'em on defense. People started to think I could play.

"I went to camp at Duke. I kind of snuck over to the receiver portion of camp without telling the coaches. Before you knew it, they were like the only school that wanted me to play receiver. ... Between Duke and playing receiver, that's kind of how I ended up there. I didn't play football until I was a sophomore in high school. I played basketball from elementary, middle school, high school. I thought I was going to be a great player until I realized that 6-1 would be my top height. It's kind of hard to play the two position at 6-1."

Met wife through teammate

A football teammate at Duke, William Hill, introduced Montgomery to his wife, the former Ebony McDuffie.

"He is probably the foremost talent in Washington, DC, from a commercial real estate standpoint," Montgomery said. "I owe him so much. He was the best man at my wedding. He's also my children's godparent. ... At the time, he was dating a young lady that my wife danced ballet with in Detroit. He also went to private elementary school with my wife in Detroit. She was at Cornell University at the time. She was a student at Cornell. She was driving down to Atlanta to go to an internship. I was in town in Durham and I came in to see my friend. There she was, visiting as well. We saw each other. After that, that was pretty much it. We met at Duke. We've kind of been together ever since that day."

The coach's wife has suspended her working endeavors for the time being.

"My wife is an attorney," Montgomery said. "Right now, she hasn't been working because we have an eight-month-old. She'll be back to work shortly unless I can talk her out of it. She doesn't let me win very many arguments with her background. She'll probably be going back to work shortly. ... She has a public health policy kind of background. She could be anywhere from managing a hospital back to actually practicing to policy and research in medicine."

Duke ends bowl losing streak

Montgomery, like his Mom, worked two jobs after being named to take over the Pirates.

He helped the Blue Devils prepare for the Pinstripe Bowl against Indiana on Dec. 26. Duke won 44-41 in overtime.

"First of all, there's so many things that you have to do to win," Montgomery said. "It's hard to win at Alabama, don't misunderstand. It's hard to win. Period. When you're fighting a history of not winning a bowl game since 1961 – that's what we were fighting – you have to go in with a different level of preparation. We full scrimmaged during the bye week. The practices were unbelievable. The experience of our guys, of seeing Coach Cut (David Cutcliffe) raise the trophy at the end of the game was what coaches do it for, what assistant coaches do it for, what head coaches do it for is to win and to be champions at the end of the year."

That outcome gave Montgomery a memorable bookend to his career at Duke.

"That experience with my quarterback, Thomas Sirk, and the offense and the defense and our special teams unit there at Duke, you couldn't have written a script more perfect than that," Montgomery said. "We overcame a lot of adversity during the year. We lost players to injury. We lost players to things we couldn't control, things in their personal life. We had to go through a lot and we overcame. At the end, for us to be raising that trophy in New York City in Yankee Stadium, I can't say enough about the men. Our offensive staff was fantastic because I was trying to work two jobs during that time."

Montgomery addressed recruiting and assembling his staff while still working for the Blue Devils.

"There's so much paper work you have to do, not only in recruiting," Montgomery said. "Some people think you can just jump on the road and start recruiting. The first thing you have to do, you have to have all the information put in front of you. Our (Duke) coaches were so lenient with me, changing meeting times from two o'clock to seven o'clock at night to be able to work for East Carolina and make sure that we got everything aligned, that we didn't break rules and we did things the right way, and we also had people that could actually be students at East Carolina and make East Carolina happy.

"All that combined, going together and at the end of the game to be holding that trophy made it all worthwhile. It was a fantastic experience."

Sleep was at a premium with Montgomery burning both ends of the candle.

"I didn't get very much sleep," he said. "My wife began to worry a little bit. She rode me a little bit. I knew at that point in time we were going to have to, from a strategic standpoint, I was going to have to beat the end of the bowl season because that's when the rest of the coaches would go to work on trying to get staffs together. I knew during that time I needed to be working but I also needed to be working at Duke.

"My job was for East Carolina even though I was offensive coordinator for Duke. To win that bowl game was huge. The recruiting portion of it – the first thing in recruiting is that we wanted to make sure during that time was we had guys on board that could do the work and we weren't having guys on board that were just good names. ... All that stuff combined, I got two or three hours of sleep a night. I was able to fool my players there. I was drinking Five Hour Energy drink. I fooled 'em like I had a lot of energy when I was dying there toward the end of the night. After the bowl I slept for about seven hours and that was great."

Barbecue plea answered

Montgomery made a plea for some Eastern North Carolina barbecue when he was introduced at the Murphy Center.

Pirate Nation responded.

"Plenty of it," Montgomery said. "So much of it I've got to figure out how to get a 20- or 30-minute run in or I'm going to start looking different quickly."