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Three of ECU's opponents have revenge in mind
Mountaineers, Hokies, Tar Heels all lost the last time they tangled with the Pirates
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Published: September 9, 2009
GREENVILLE - Somebody reminded Coach Skip Holtz that East Carolina's three remaining power-conference opponents have a few scores to settle with his team.
"Ssssh," Holtz said Monday, with a laugh. "Don't tell them that. We don't want them to remember those."
Too late. West Virginia, Virginia Tech and North Carolina are plenty aware of one thing they have in common: The last time they played the Pirates, they lost.
In the past four seasons under Holtz, East Carolina has solidified its reputation as a scrappy underdog willing to take on all comers. But along with those program-building victories came a shift in perception.
Now, it's the big boys from BCS conferences that are taking aim at ECU -- starting this week with revenge-seeking West Virginia (1-0).
"The big mindset this year has been, ‘You've got to go earn everything you get,' " Holtz said. "Nobody cares what we have returning or what we did a year ago. We have to earn it."
East Carolina (1-0) is trying to recapture the same chip-on-the-shoulder mentality that last season led to two of the biggest victories in school history -- against West Virginia and Virginia Tech.
Holtz said that when teams try to protect something, they lose their aggression and play it too close to the vest.
"Hopefully, that's a lesson we learned a year ago, because I think when we got to 3-0, and everybody started talking about the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow," Holtz said. "We started playing to protect the pot of gold -- like it was already ours."
The Pirates knocked off nationally ranked Virginia Tech and West Virginia in consecutive weeks to thrust themselves into the national rankings, generating plenty of bust-the-BCS buzz -- and spoiling West Virginia's national-title hopes.
"I'm not going to make a big deal out of last year -- I don't live my life revengeful," Coach Bill Stewart of West Virginia said.
"But I'm sure that 24-3 thrashing we took was an embarrassing loss, and a hard lesson for our young people to learn. It showed our football team that we have to do more than just throw on the old gold and blue."
After this week's visit to Morgantown, the Pirates will travel to Chapel Hill. In their most recent meeting two years ago, they beat the Tar Heels. The Pirates will plays host to the Hokies on Nov. 5.
Those big victories last year led some to anoint ECU as a chic pick to challenge for an at-large berth in one of the big bowls.
The schedule might give East Carolina plenty of chances to claim enough impressive out-of-conference victories to put them in that conversation. But Holtz clearly isn't worried about having to match potential BCS busters BYU and Boise State, who beat ranked big names Oklahoma and Oregon in Week 1.
"At this point, we've earned one win," Holtz said, referring to last week's closer-than-expected victory over Appalachian State. "I don't want to talk about anything else. We're going to go try to get our second win."
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