CHRONICLING ECU & C-USA SPORTS
-----
|
View
from the 'ville
Thursday, August 31, 2006
By Al Myatt |
 |
Navy next step in shaping
Holtz coaching persona
From Stasavich to Thompson,
Holtz predecessors laid down some distinctive precedents
©2006 Bonesville.net
All rights reserved.
There's more time to contemplate a season
opener than any other game of the year. I mention that as justification for
letting my mind and typing fingers wander as I wait — along with a multitude
of East Carolina fans — for the seeming eternity it has taken for the 2006
season to get here.
ECU's colorful football past provides needed
substance to ponder as we mark time before kickoff.
John Thompson would hardly be on the Mount
Rushmore of ECU coaches but he was always upbeat and optimistic. Steve Logan
was guarded and cautious. Bill Lewis was organized to a fault.
Every ECU coach has had his own personality.
Art Baker was pleasant and conversational. Ed
Emory was gruff and direct until you got to know him. Pat Dye was confident
and aloof with a downhome spin on life.
Since East Carolina first stepped up to the
major college division in the 'sixties, every Pirate coach — from the era of
crusty Hall of Famer Clarence Stasavich to the present — also has had his
own special way of approaching a football game in his remarks to the media.
ECU has never faced Navy in football before.
The Midshipmen provide the opposition as the Pirates get the season started
on Saturday at 5:30 p.m. at Naval-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium.
Given the relative proximity of the programs,
it is to ECU athletic director Terry Holland's credit that a series has been
started. The Navy versus the Pirates. Seems like a natural rivalry, one that
was played out a few times in the 18th century along the North Carolina
coast.
The Pirates and Midshipmen have met in
basketball. In fact, they were once in the old East Coast Athletic
Conference together. ECU met Navy when it had some of its best teams that
featured David Robinson, who went on to NBA stardom. ECU is 8-12 against the
Mids in hoops.
I digress, but that's permissible given the
fact that ECU last played a football game on Nov. 26. Normally there are six
days between games. We're in the ninth month since the Pirates traded helmet
paint with someone other than themselves.
Therefore, I digress further.
One can only imagine what the pregame focus
would have been if some of the Pirates' former coaches had been making the
trip to Annapolis on Saturday.
If Thompson was still in charge, his attitude
might be something like, "I love camp, love people and I tell you one thing
— our kids are going up there to fight for 60 minutes because they don't
know any other way to represent this great Pirate Nation."
If Logan was still at the helm of the Pirate
ship, the summation would be quick with a touch of his dry wit: "We've got
to play assignment football on defense against that option or they'll turn
it into a track meet up there. We've go to take care of the football on
offense. They're a great football team. I'm ready for questions."
Lewis might simply say, "I believe." That
worked pretty well in 1991.
Art Baker's approach would be something like,
"It's two great football programs and it should be a great football game. We
just want to be the ones smilin' at the end."
Ed Emory: "We better go up there ready to play
or we'll come back with our tails between our legs."
Pat Dye: "We ain't never played no Naval
Academy befo'. It's a good thing we ain't playin' on no battleship or our
lil' ol' skinny legged boys might get seasick. It's gon' be tough enough to
play 'em on dry land."
Skip Holtz has his own distinctive approach.
As he moves closer to starting his second
season with the Pirates, he sounds worried. Maybe it runs in the family. Dad
Lou could make a junior high team sound like a Super Bowl champion in his
game week appraisal of an opponent.
Then again, the more one considers this Navy
team, the more reasonable Holtz's concerns may be. As good as it seems to
the win-starved Pirate faithful that ECU was 5-6 last season after two
seasons in which the program stumbled to a combined 3-20 record, the
Midshipmen have been to three bowls since ECU last played in the postseason.
This isn't Skip's dad's Navy team and success
for the Mids is no longer defined in the black and white footage of when
Roger Staubach was shredding defenses. The reason that there is something
other than pomp and fighting spirit at Navy these days is a guy named Paul
Johnson, a good old graduate of Western Carolina, class of 1979. He's as
crafty as any fox in the valley around Cullowhee.
Holtz remembers him being on the other
sideline when Connecticut played a Johnson-coached Georgia Southern team in
the Division I-AA playoffs in 1998. UConn was saddled with a 52-30 loss.
Johnson has moved on and his personnel has
changed but he's still running the same option attack.
"I look at this (Navy) team on film and they
remind me a lot of that Georgia Southern team," Holtz said. "They have a
bruising fullback. They have very good speed and talent. Paul Johnson's
teams are always going to be tough.
"They're always going to be well-coached.
They're going to be well-disciplined. They're tough. They can run the
football and put points on the board. I believe this (Navy) senior class has
26 wins in three years. ... That's not by accident, because when Coach
Johnson went in there they were running a similar scheme but they weren't
nearly as productive."
Holtz and staff have restocked the offensive
and defensive fronts with promising talent. In Holtz's sage analysis, how
quickly the younger players up front gain experience and mature will be a
key to the degree of success the Pirates manage this season against a
difficult but compelling schedule. Skill positions and the secondary appear
solid. Injuries to a couple of linebackers don't make Holtz's pregame
outlook any rosier.
"I'm sure Navy is licking their chops right
now," said the latest of ECU's coaching personalities. "I mean we're last in
the league in rush defense a year ago. We graduated four linebackers and we
open the season against the number one rushing team in the country."
Ulp!
Holtz may be a bit of a worrier, but this week
his anxiety is well founded.
The good news is that the season is just two
days away!
Send an e-mail message to Al Myatt.
Dig into Al Myatt's Bonesville
archives.
02/23/2007 12:30:37 AM
----- |
