Game Slants Sunday, September 16, 2007 By Denny O'Brien

The silver lining of disappointment

By Denny O'Brien
©2007 Bonesville.net
All Rights Reserved.

GREENVILLE — You have to admit, East Carolina football is fun again. Even though the Pirates lost 28-21 to Conference USA nemesis Southern Miss, it’s hard not to get excited about the current state of the program.

Because this loss truly stung. Bad.

It was the kind of healthy hurt that’s attached to big-game disappointment, something which East Carolina hasn’t been positioned to experience much over the last several years.

While it’s not difficult to pinpoint the Pirates’ shortcomings against the Golden Eagles — seriously, where’s the creativity in that? — you would be remiss to overlook what is quickly redefining ECU football:

Sellouts. An intriguing schedule. Competitive games against quality opponents. A playmaking quarterback. Hard-hitting defense.

For a program that needed resuscitation when Skip Holtz arrived three years ago, that’s a pretty nice start.

It just wasn’t enough to dethrone the C-USA kings.

“We had plenty of opportunities on both sides of the ball,” Holtz said after the game. “I know I’m rambling, but I’ve got a lot of thoughts running through my head right now. I’m frustrated because I think this team is working extremely hard.

“We just make one mistake after another to beat ourselves, and that’s what young football teams do. I think we’ve got too many people who are excited about playing, and aren’t excited about what we have to do to win.”

Seriously, who expected this group to contend for league titles just a couple of years into the Holtz regime?

Not me. And probably not you.

But here ECU is, right on the cusp of contending for a title.

The Pirates are doing it despite the abundance of inexperience that peppers the roster in several key positions. And they’re doing it with a starting quarterback who four weeks ago was buried deep as a third stringer on the depth chart.

Yet Patrick Pinkney has quickly become the crowd favorite. And after his third quarter performance, there was confidence throughout Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium that his game against North Carolina was no fluke — that he has a bit of the quarterback magic that was first conjured in Ficklen by Jeff Blake.

“He turned and he made some really big plays,” Holtz said of Pinkney. “He kind of got into a rhythm. He got back to where he was running the offense a little bit.

“Really, it was like we were out of whack in the first half. But when you have penalties and things like that, that’s what happens to you. Then you try to make 15 yards again. It’s like going down there and missing a field goal.”

Translated: it hurts. Just like you would expect it to for a team that has navigated through an emotional three-game gauntlet to begin the 2007 season and is literally a handful of plays from 3-0. That’s perfection, and this team has played nowhere close to it.

Nor should it. Not when the entire right side of the offensive line and several key pieces of the secondary made their debut in 2007. Nor when the interior of the defensive front features a sophomore and true freshman.

Against East Carolina’s schedule, those should be difficult factors to overcome. Some have said impossible. But there is a belief along the sideline and throughout the stands that ECU again can win regardless of the opponent.

That’s why each false start against Southern Miss pierced the inner lining of your stomach. It’s why your purple heart plummeted each time a Pirates receiver bobbled a pass.

Back when losing left you numb, you didn’t feel so much as a pinch when the Pirates botched fake punts from their own 20-yard line. Now that illegal motion penalty is worse than a sucker punch to the gut. It makes you spend the next week pondering all the ‘What Ifs’ of a game that easily could have gone ECU’s way.

And there’s no denying there are many of those to deeply consider over the next seven days. Too many to list here, for sure.

Regardless, there’s no denying that the road to the C-USA title still runs through Hattiesburg. For now. But it’s not hard to envision those roads soon shifting towards Greenville.

That’s what makes Saturday’s loss hurt most.

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09/16/2007 04:25:43 AM