Gridiron reunion: U.Va. vs. ECU
Cavaliers, Pirates meet for the first time in 30 years; next game 2008
BY JEFF WHITE
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER Oct 3, 2006
VIRGINIA AT ECU
SATURDAY: 6 p.m. ON THE AIR: TV -- CSTV; Radio -- WRVA (1140), 5 p.m.

The University of Virginia's relationship with East Carolina University in football looks, for now at least, to be a short-term affair. Virginia Tech and ECU are together for the long haul.

More than 30 years after their first encounter, U.Va. (2-3) and ECU (1-3) will meet for the second time in football this weekend. Kickoff is set for 6 p.m. Saturday at Dowden-Ficklen Stadium in Greenville, N.C.

The Pirates will play the Cavaliers at Scott Stadium in 2008. At this point, no other games between the teams are planned, though that could change. The schools agreed "to see how this series went before scheduling more games," said Terry Holland, East Carolina's athletic director.

Holland, of course, worked at U.Va. in several capacities -- men's basketball coach, athletic director and special assistant to President John Casteen -- before taking the AD's job at East Carolina in 2004.

He has scheduled ambitiously since returning to his native North Carolina. ECU, a member of Conference USA, has set up series with U.Va., N.C. State, North Carolina, West Virginia, Navy and Virginia Tech. The Hokies will meet the Pirates nine times under their deal, starting next season in Blacksburg.

"The games against regional competitors . . . are very important to us," Holland said in an e-mail to The Times-Dispatch yesterday, "since Conference USA provides more of a national platford (and gets us into some tremendous media markets Dallas, Houston, New Orleans, Memphis, Tulsa, Birmingham, Orlando.)"

Playing teams from the ACC and Big East "provides ECU with a measuring stick to see how much progress we are making against teams that are trying to achieve the same level of success we would like to achieve," Holland said.

After finishing 1-11 in 2003 and 2-9 in '04, ECU switched coaches, dismissing John Thompson and hiring Skip Holtz. The Pirates improved to 5-6 last season. Their record isn't impressive this season, but the Pirates have given their fans cause for optimism.

Holland was U.Va.'s athletic director when Al Groh was hired to replace George Welsh as the school's football coach. Groh said Sunday night that he likes the series with ECU.

"It's a [Division] I-A team, which we wanted to do," Groh said. "It's kind of a local game, and our fans can get to it. When [the Pirates] play up here, they'll have fans, which will help give us a big crowd. It just seemed to make sense."

EXTRA POINTS: U.Va.'s Oct. 14 game against ACC rival Maryland at Scott Stadium will start at 3:30 p.m. It will not be televised, but in some places the game will be available over the Internet on ESPN360. . . . Senior cornerback Marcus Hamilton, who intercepted two passes Saturday in Virginia's 37-0 rout of Duke, has been named ACC defensive back of the week. Hamilton, a second-team all-ACC pick in 2005, is second among active players in Division I-A with 13 career interceptions.

 

Sick, injured Pirates have difficult time preparing for Virginia
AARON BEARD
Associated Press

GREENVILLE, N.C. - It's hard enough to run a practice with 29 names on the injury report. Now Skip Holtz is getting an extra obstacle just in time for East Carolina's game against Virginia this weekend.

The coach said Monday that a stomach bug is rolling through the Pirates' roster, sidelining several players and limiting the team's ability to fully prepare for the Cavaliers.

"We've got a number of injuries right now," Holtz said, "and then when you put this little bug on top of it, it's a concern."

This should have been the chance for the Pirates (1-3) to heal from early season knicks and bruises in time to face Virginia (2-3) on Saturday. They were coming off a bye week following a 27-10 loss to West Virginia on Sept. 23.

But late last week, one East Carolina player had come down with the bug. By Sunday's practice, eight players were sidelined with it.

Holtz said that number is expected to grow to 11 by Tuesday's workout - Monday is an off day - with the bulk of the illnesses reported on the offensive and defensive lines. Even if players shake off the worst symptoms, Holtz said they likely will have lost some strength and weight that might make it difficult for them to play at full speed.

"It's not only the guys I worry about that are going to miss practice Tuesday, but then there's those guys that give it to somebody and then those guys miss Wednesday," Holtz said. "I think - I'm hoping - by Saturday it will have run its course through this football team, but you're not going to have the opportunity practice together as a team."

In addition, the Pirates have several players - including big-play wideout Aundrae Allison - nursing injuries. Allison, who hurt an ankle during the loss to the Mountaineers, was one of the 11 injured players to miss Sunday's practice along with starting running back Chris Johnson.

Johnson is listed as probable with a toe injury, part of an injury report that includes starting linebacker Quentin Cotton (questionable, ankle) along with defensive linemen Brandon Setzer (probable, knee) and Wendell Chavis (questionable, knee).

The Pirates are also thin at running back. Reserve Dominique Lindsay is out with a knee injury suffered against UAB that was expected to keep him out for up to eight weeks.

But right now, the immediate concern is the stomach bug.

"I might say by Thursday it wasn't as big of an issue as we thought it was going to be," Holtz said. "But if we go up and practice on Tuesday and seven defensive linemen can't practice, how do you practice as a team?"

 

Flu bug hits Pirates hard as they prepare for Cavaliers
By Nathan Summers
The Daily Reflector
Tuesday, October 03, 2006

Instead of getting extra rest during the off week, many East Carolina football players were getting bed rest instead.

Nearly a dozen flu cases kept players out of practices the last several days, head coach Skip Holtz confirmed Monday. While Holtz didn't expect it would drastically affect his game day roster for Saturday's meeting with Virginia, he wasn't thrilled with the amount of practice time it had already cost several of his players.

"We had 19 players miss practice last night," Holtz said at his press conference in preparation for Saturday's 6 p.m. home kickoff against the 2-3 Cavaliers. "I'm a little bit worried. Hopefully it's a 24-hour bug that will get in and out of their system, but it's going to be hard to get through practice here Tuesday and Wednesday with the number of guys we have over there at the student health center."

Of the 19, at least 11 were specifically because of illness, Holtz said.

Even a few days away from training and practice, Holtz said, can cause weight and strength loss. While he said he expects all of his flu-ridden players to be ready Saturday, Holtz's main concern is the missed time in game preparation for Virginia.

The shuffle

Still in search of answers in the running game, Holtz said the coaching staff examined numerous possibilities both on the field and in the film room the last 10 days.

As a team, the Pirates' four-game total of 390 yards for an average of 97.5 per game ranks them 89th nationally, and some intense study revealed little more than proof of what the team already knows, according to Holtz. He said the staff broke down every run play from each of the Pirates' first four games.

"Some of it's the running back and some of it's the offensive line and some of it's the defensive personnel that we're playing," said Holtz. "It's a combination of everything."

The study also included a hard look at shifting some personnel on the front line for specific running situations.

Holtz said the team experimented with reserve center Stephen Heis at tackle, starting center Tom Wingenbach at guard and starting left guard Matt Butler at center. Also, true freshman guard Cory Dowless took some snaps with the top unit this week.

The more visible answer in the running game, however, might be sophomore transfer Brandon Simmons (Elizabeth City State), who will try to fill the void left by injured Dominique Lindsay, despite seeing just a couple of carries in three games so far.

Holtz said the 6-foot-1, 223-pound Simmons will get his chance to get the Pirates' engine rumbling against the Cavaliers.

"We miss that big, physical back," Holtz said. "After watching this week, I think a guy like Brandon Simmons might have a chance to play more of that role for us. He's a bigger back, he's more physical, he's breaking tackles and I think he has a chance. He's not a guy that anybody knows right now ... he's kind of what we're down to at this point, and I think he's got a chance and he'll definitely play on Saturday."

Still missing

Holtz confirmed the off week did not speed the recovery of injuries to key players. Unable to practice in the team's return to its game-week cycle Sunday night were wide receiver Aundrae Allison (ankle), starting tailback Chris Johnson (toe), defensive tackle Brandon Setzer (knee) and defensive end Shauntae Hunt (knee).

Also, defensive tackle Wendell Chavis (knee) remained questionable, as did linebacker Quentin Cotton (ankle).

 

Holland believes NCAA missing major element in graduation-rate goal
By Nathan Summers
The Daily Reflector
Saturday, September 30, 2006

The NCAA's Graduation Success Rate reports this year suggest the nation's student-athletes are closer to attaining the target set by the governing body of college sports.

According to East Carolina's Director of Athletics Terry Holland, however, the effort to reach an 80 percent success rate in Division I, as is the goal of NCAA President Myles Brand, overlooks the amount of class time student-athletes sacrifice based solely on their team's playing schedules.

Further, Holland said, even the current national graduation success rate of 77 percent — up one percent from a year ago — might be part of a mixed message filtering from the NCAA's top level down to its players.

"Setting a goal of 80 percent graduation rates without addressing the missed class time created by regular season, conference and NCAA events does not make sense to me," said Holland, whose school's own GSR was boosted by its 100 percent rankings in both men's and women's golf. "How can our athletes believe that the NCAA (or any of us who are the NCAA) truly cares about academics when NCAA Championships and many other events are scheduled during the students' classes, their exam periods and even during their graduation ceremonies?"

The GSR numbers — the first in a two-part report that will be complete sometime in October — are based on the four-class aggregate from the Division I classes that entered school from 1996 to 1999.

Other individual strengths for ECU in terms of GSR were women's swimming (95 percent), basketball (94), soccer (90) and volleyball (90). Notable among the men were cross country/track (83) and football (78).

While Holland might be pleased with how his university is doing within the parameters of the NCAA, he seems to favor a more academics-driven approach that creates a greater equality between class time and field time.

The former Virginia basketball coach and AD said the current trend too often forces student-athletes to decide to give their attention to one or the other — school or sports — but not both.

"At UVa., our men's and women's lacrosse teams had to choose almost annually whether to play in the NCAA Championship or attend their graduation ceremony," Holland said. "Obviously, they chose to play in the NCAA Championship and athletics held its own graduation ceremony for them when they returned. But that is not the same as walking down the lawn with your classmates."

In his 16 seasons as a head coach at UVa., Holland said his players rarely missed classes despite always playing a national schedule. Instead, he said players were gone from campus by 1 p.m. for weekday games and back home by 1 a.m.

They were expected in class the next day. Making classes a priority again, however, is largely in the hands of the NCAA, not its individual parts.

"We played N.C. State at home on Saturday and got on a plane and played at Missouri on Sunday," Holland recalled of his Virginia teams' rigorous schedules.

The best answer at East Carolina in Holland's eyes is the more traditional one. In short, there is no substitute for a student being in his or her assigned seat with the rest of the class when the bell rings.

So whenever and wherever possible, ECU's student-athletes will live their lives in that order, not the reverse.

"We are exploring all options to help our athletes attend as many of their classes as possible and really be students for most of their time here," Holland said. "We have some terrific young people who seem to be able to overcome almost any obstacle and they are getting great grades, participating in community projects and performing at a high level athletically."

The danger in the trend staying the same, in Holland's view, is that student-athletes will gradually lose sight of the need for balance between school and sports and will concentrate only the final score when it comes to making the grade.

"I like the emphasis on improving graduation rates but would like to see the NCAA support a new set of priorities in order to achieve those rates," Holland said. "If we are not careful, we end up with our actions speaking so loudly that our athletes can not hear our words."