The Pirates’ victory over the Tar Heels on September 8, 2018 was one of the unlikeliest and yet most welcome ever. In 2015, ECU descended into a succession of losing seasons as head coach Ruffin McNeill’s sixth and last year with the Pirates ended up abysmally, 5-7 overall and 3-5 in American Athletic Conference (AAC) play. Scottie Montgomery was soon hired with high hopes for a turnaround, but that never materialized. Instead, things worsened: three years in a row – 2016, 2017, and 2018 – ECU ended up with a 3-9 record overall. One memorable, even impressive moment in this dismal stretch of ECU football history occurred in 2018 when the Pirates defeated the Tar Heels in Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium. In the glow of that amazing win, Pirate fans basked in glory briefly, forgetting the losses past and yet to come as they savored the victory over in-state archrival, Chapel Hill.
Many fans had walked into Dowdy-Ficklen quietly fearing that ECU would again go down in defeat. After all, the first game of the season, against North Carolina A&T, should have been an easy victory but turned into an embarrassing 28-23 loss. Even before the 2018 season, attendance at Pirate home games was conspicuously down. The season opener attracted only 38,640 fans in a 50,000-capacity stadium. By season’s end, as loss followed loss, Dowdy-Ficklen appeared half-full at best, with announced attendance numbers falling below the 30,000 mark. The UNC game brought 39,298 fans, the highest attendance for the year, but still significantly lower than the 2014 Dowdy-Ficklen ECU-UNC game, 51,082.
Yet for those who stayed through the 2018 game, witnessing the progressive Pirate rout of the Tar Heels, 41-19, the victory revived memories of past gridiron greatness and brought a new rush of purple and gold glory. Coach Montgomery had acknowledged prior to the game that it was the most important in his career, alluding to the well-discussed prospect of his firing if something positive did not happen soon. The victory over UNC salvaged his position for the remainder of 2018, but shortly after the season concluded, Coach Mo was fired, despite his glory game over the Tar Heels.
The 2018 Tar Heel team was, after all, the weakest and most demoralized in decades. Still reeling from the psychological damage of a decade long stretch of academic-athletic scandals, the Tar Heels faired no better on the gridiron than did the Pirates. Adding to their tainted past, UNC suffered as new revelations unfolded early in the 2018 season that 13 gridders would be suspended for selling team-issued Jordan tennis shoes on the black-market, prompting further ignominy just when Carolina fans thought things could not get any worse. UNC lost its season opener to the California-Berkeley Golden Bears, 24-17, and so approached the Pirates with a poor, but matching, 0-1, season record. Worse still, pre-season predictions were that the Tar Heels would end up in sixth place, just ahead of Virginia in the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) cellar. By season’s end, the Tar Heels were 2-9 overall, and 1-7 in the ACC Coastal Division, in flat bottom rather than sixth place. No sooner had the 2018 season ended than head coach Larry Fedora was fired. Even with UNC’s dire straits, pre-game analysts favored UNC over ECU by 15 points, judging it the better of the two pitiful teams.
Once the game began, the Pirates surprised even their most devoted fans, staging a rare, consistently strong performance, racking up 510 offensive yards for 41 points, with no major turnovers. Quarterback Reid Herring connected for 290 yards and a touchdown on 32 throws, averaging 9 yards per completion. ECU ran for 220 yards on 49 carries for an average of 4.5 yards per rush. Running back Anthony Scott emerged as the major ball carrier, racking up 73 yards and one touchdown. Sophomore running back Darius Pinnix rushed for 65 yards and a touchdown. Holton Ahlers, a local talent from D. H. Conley High School in Winterville, debuted, running the ball eight times for 41 yards and two touchdowns.
Defensively, the Pirates played exceptionally well, holding the Heels to 19 points and completely shutting them out in the second half. While UNC accumulated 310 yards in the first half, those gains only led to one touchdown and four field goals. In the second half, UNC gained only 85 yards offensively. As ECU proceeded to add an extra 20 points, UNC simply lacked defensive power to stop the onslaught.
In one of the uglier moments of the game, UNC running back Antonio Williams was ejected for leading with his helmet against Pirate defensive back Colby Gore, leaving Gore motionless on the field for several minutes before being taken to Vidant Medical Center. As Williams exited the stadium, he added to UNC’s shame by taunting the ECU crowd. Aaron Ramseur, one of the Pirates’ defensive stars of the game with eight tackles, commented that Williams’ repugnant behavior might have “sparked” the Pirate defensive grip on UNC for the remainder of the game.
Following the win over UNC, Pirate head coach Montgomery enjoyed a 1-1 season record. But what followed was disastrous: loss after loss continued until his firing at season’s end was a foregone conclusion that neither surprised nor disappointed many. Likewise, UNC exited the game 0-2, and things only got worse. While a Pirate victory over the Tar Heels will always be valued, the 2018 contest would have been all the greater had it prompted renewed gridiron strength and performance for the remainder of the season.
Following the 2018 matchup, the prospect for continued rivalry with UNC and N.C. State remains uncertain. The most recent rounds of competition came only after the North Carolina General Assembly passed legislation requiring the Division I schools in the state to compete with one another, meaning that UNC and N.C. State had to schedule games with ECU. Recent ACC contracts with ESPN, however, require participating schools to play teams outside the ACC that belong to major football conferences. Although a Division I school, ECU belongs to the American Athletic Conference, one of the lesser leagues, leading to its likely exclusion in the future. There is always the possibility that once again the state legislature, led by pro-ECU lawmakers, will require once more that in-state gridiron rivalries continue. While no one wants politics to dictate athletic schedules, some see it as a necessary evil. Until something gives, another ECU-UNC matchup remains a distant prospect at best
Sources
- Alexander, Jonathan M. “Analysis: Here are five quick observations from UNC’s loss to ECU.” News and Observer. September 8, 2018. https://www.newsobserver.com/article218005195.html
- Alexander, Jonathan M. “5 reasons to be optimistic about UNC football. And 5 reasons for worry.” News and Observer. August 28, 2018. https://www.newsobserver.com/sports/article217079265.html
- Brown, Corey. “Political hand needed to resume state rivalries.” Rocky Mount Telegram. June 1995. P. 1B.
- Carroll, Chase. “UNC possibly Mo’s last shot.” East Carolinian. September 3, 2018. http://www.theeastcarolinian.com/sports/article_bb99112e-afcc-11e8-ba00-ef60d2d7108b.html
- Giglio, Joe. “Scheduling future games for ECU against NC State and UNC will be complicated.” News and Observer. September 9, 2016. https://www.newsobserver.com/sports/college/acc/unc/article100819162.html
- Guth, David. “UNC Ducking Pirates.” Nashville Graphic. September 2, 1982. P. 6.
- Johnson, Dylan. “ECU dominates UNC again.” East Carolinian. September 9, 2018. http://www.theeastcarolinian.com/sports/article_82112e14-b45e-11e8-a428-371072cb7c87.html
- Murschel, Matt. “Pirates bond, dodge storm in Orlando.” Orlando Sentinel. September 21, 2018. P. C4.
- “New Law Alllows State-ECU Rivalry to Go On.” wralSPORTSfan. November 19, 1997. https://www.wral.com/news/local/story/167278/
- Roberts, Daniel. “Overall dominant second half fuels ECU in blowout win against UNC.” East Carolinian. September 10, 2018. http://www.theeastcarolinian.com/sports/article_bce623d4-b547-11e8-9392-cb25335ba070.html