DENNY O'BRIEN: Pirates banking on old truism

DENNY O'BRIEN'S HARRIS POLL BALLOT

Denny O'Brien is a member of the 2006 voting panel for the Harris Interactive College Football Poll, commissioned by the Bowl Championship Series. O'Brien is also the editor of The Pirates' Chest magazine, a senior writer for Bonesville Magazine and co-host of WNCT-AM Talk 1070's Game Day Countdown Show.

The Harris Poll is a component of the BCS Standings. The season's fifth BCS Standings were released on Sunday.

Here is O'Brien's ballot for this week's Harris Poll, conducted by Harris Interactive:

1. Ohio State
2. Michigan
3. Florida
4. Southern Cal
5. Notre Dame
6. Arkansas
7. Rutgers
8. LSU
9. Louisville
10. West Virginia
11. Texas
12. Boise State
13. Wisconsin
14. Auburn
15. California
16. Oklahoma
17. Wake Forest
18. Georgia Tech
19. Brigham Young
20. Boston College
21. Tennessee
22. Virginia Tech
23. Oregon
24. Hawaii
25. Nebraska

Checking In:
Nebraska (25)

Checking Out:
Texas A&M

Biggest Jump:
Rutgers

Biggest Plunge:
Auburn

BCS STANDINGS

East Carolina's Senior Day victory would normally be cause for celebration. Add to that all of the adversity the Pirates' seniors have faced during their careers, and you would think bowl eligibility might send champagne corks flying through the air.

But that's not what occurred in the ECU locker room following Saturday's 33-20 victory over Marshall. There the Pirates went through their normal routine of crooning the school fight song and exchanging high-fives, but then quickly turned the conversation to the next game.

And while others were patting them on the back for holding Marshall to only 35 yards rushing, the ECU players were focusing on the areas in which they could have performed better.

"As a team we were not satisfied with the win," defensive end Zach Slate said. "Defensively, we had those couple of turnovers at the end of the game.

"But we take pride in finishing a game, 60 minutes all the way through. We played well and we had our mistakes, of course, but we're not satisfied as a team and we won't be until we play a great game on offense and defense."

Slate and his teammates hope to put the perfect game together next weekend at Houston when they face upstart Rice. That's because they view the Owls as the only game on the schedule.

It's part of a philosophy ECU head coach Skip Holtz implemented earlier in the season, one in which the Pirates are poised to remain "humble in the past, hungry in the future, and 1-0 in the present." While that may seem like a new spin on the old cliché to take one game at a time, it has been more than just talk for the Pirates.

"We don't look forward, we look a week at a time and try to go 1-0 each time," Pirates receiver Steven Rogers said. "People outside of our team, fans, students, and everyone is talking about bowls and this and that stuff.

"The team's mindset is one game at a time. That's the way that we've been doing it and it's been working well."

That mantra has propelled ECU to four straight victories and within one win of a berth in the Conference USA title game. And its effectiveness has the Pirates 100 percent invested in it.

"You have to buy into it," senior tackle Eric Graham said. "It is a one-game season the rest of the way out. We've just got to get the next one and try to be 1-0 at the end of the weekend."

Punctuating this weekend without a blemish will be no small feat for the Pirates. Waiting in the wings is a much-improved Rice club that upset Tulsa on Saturday.

But Slate, Rogers, and Graham insist that the upcoming opponent has little impact on the Pirates' goal — and that is to finish this week a perfect 1-0.

It's fitting that East Carolina must close its regular season with two games on the road.

It was road wins at Southern Miss and Central Florida that put the Pirates in the driver's seat in C-USA's East Division, and it is a game at Rice that could send them to the league title game and all but assure a spot in one of the conference's five bowl tie-ins.

"We said if we want to make anything special happen with this season, we've got to be road warriors," Holtz said. "That's been our battle cry.

"One thing that happened to us at Central Florida when I brought the team out, and it was in front of the student section and they were right on top of us and they're yelling things and kind of cussing at us, I was sitting there and Marcus Hand looked right at me and said, 'This is great.' It's like, now we're getting there."

Slate and his teammates have embraced their role of playing the road spoiler and are constantly reminded of the task ahead.

"That is the battle cry," Slate said. "I was pretty surprised when we came to Central Florida, we had some tee-shirts waiting for us that I didn't expect. And Coach Golden had that banner up in the weight room, and it's motivation.

If the Pirates can defeat Rice Saturday and follow that with a victory over Houston in the C-USA title game, Slate and his teammates will receive new tee-shirts and raise a new banner that celebrates a different name. It's one that has been attached to no other ECU team: C-USA Champs.

Receiver Aundrae Allison is quite accustomed to catching touchdown passes. But it's apparent that he could use some practice throwing them.

With the Pirates leading 23-14 in the fourth quarter, Allison hurled a 34-yard touchdown pass off a reverse to Rogers to put the game away, but the pass was far from picture perfect.

"That was a terrible pass," Graham said jokingly. "I was just hoping he caught it. It just felt great to see him score.

"But Steven Rogers, his celebrations are terrible, but that's all right... he scored. It was a terrible pass. Terrible."

Though Graham was merely having a little light-hearted fun with his teammates, the play didn't unfold exactly by design. Marshall's pursuit forced Allison to evade a couple of tacklers and then hurl a wounded duck to Rogers.

Holtz credits the play's ultimate success to earlier calls that set up the clinching score.

"We had run two reverses," Holtz said. "We had run two reverses and I wanted to get this thrown early. I was trying to set it up.

"We ran a number of reverses against them a year ago because they flow so hard. They were flowing so fast with their linebackers to try to take away the run. I ran a couple of reverses to get the ball out on the perimeter. The way they were flowing, they had to take it away with their support."