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BAILEY'S TAKE
ON PIRATE SPORTS
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From the Anchor Desk
Monday, October 24, 2006
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By Brian Bailey |
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Pirates open 'third' season at
Southern Miss
©2006 Bonesville.net
All rights reserved.
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SKIP HOLTZ PRESS CONFERENCE:
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Coach Skip Holtz' remarks from his Monday
media luncheon. (Recorded by Brian Bailey) ... |
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Before this season, East
Carolina coach Skip Holtz broke the Pirates' schedule down in three parts.
Part number one was a two-week
road trip, with visits to Annapolis and Birmingham. The trip featured a
young Pirate football team experiencing the growing pains that go with two
close losses. You’ll recall that East Carolina almost pulled the UAB game
out of the fire, but still lost after that late fumble.
The second part of the
schedule was just completed. East Carolina had five home games over a span
of six weeks. The five games included contests against four bowl champions
from last season. The Pirates went 3-2, with losses to Conference USA
favorite Tulsa and 5th-ranked West Virginia.
As we close out October, it’s
on to part three of the ECU schedule. A home game with Marshall in two weeks
is sandwiched around a pair of two-game road trips. Up first, journeys to
Hattiesburg and Orlando to face Southern Miss and Central Florida,
respectively.
Then after the Thundering Herd
visits Greenville, the Pirates wrap up 2006 with trips to Rice and N.C.
State.
“I really like the middle part
of the schedule,” joked Holtz on Monday at his weekly news conference. “I
say we move those five to the front of the schedule, and then have five more
at the back. Now that would be a schedule!”
Holtz knows that his young
squad grew up a bunch in that first part of the schedule. Now the challenge
is to refocus this group on how to play on the road. It won’t be easy in
Hattiesburg, a place the Pirates have rarely found success.
East Carolina has lost five in
a row in the series, and has fallen in 9 of the last 10 meetings between the
two teams. If there is a silver lining, it’s the fact that the Pirates do
have 5 wins in 15 tries at Southern Miss, while ECU has lost 14 of 16
against the Golden Eagles in Greenville.
Holtz says the experience from
the early road games should pay dividends this time out.
“I feel much better about it
now than I did at the beginning of the year,” said Holtz. “At the beginning
of the year we were taking a lot of players on the road that had never
played a game, let alone traveled. Now all of a sudden a guy like Corey
Dallas, who didn’t play in those first two games, but did travel, has had a
great opportunity to get a lot of experience at home and we’ll count on him
to play well this week on the road.”
Holtz takes a Hoosiers
approach to the road games with his team. Do you remember when Gene Hackman
had his players measure the height of the baskets in the big arena during
the state tournament? Holtz takes the same approach.
“Once we get there we go
through the stadium, we talk about the football field being the same length,
size and shape," explained Holtz. "You try to get them comfortable that this
is still just a game. Once the ball is put on the tee and kicked off, it is
still just a game.”
Pinkney gets his groove back
What a difference a week makes
for Pirate quarterback James Pinkney.
Pinkney was totally distraught
after the loss to Tulsa last week. He was mad at himself, mad at his
teammates and pretty much mad at the world.
Saturday, the big smile was
back. Pinkney was 31-40 for 391 yards and two touchdowns in the 38-21 win
over Southern Methodist.
“It felt great,” said Pinkney
after the win. “I felt good back there and we made some good plays. It was
great.”
When I told Pinkney that he
almost eclipsed the 400-yard mark for the day, he smiled and joked that he
had a couple of dropped balls in the game, implying that he could have
gotten to 400.
He smiled again because he
knew his receiving corps had many more catches then drops in the game.
It was certainly good to see
that big smile return from James Pinkney.
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04/21/2008 07:04:01 PM |
