ECU fans,
I know that your schools has traditionally beaten up on Memphis and UCF regularly in CUSA east. But now that ECU doesn't have Skip Holtz as a coach anymore, will you FB program survive the radical change to a new coach? This is not meant to be mean spirited or flaming, just an honest question.

Also, will ECU BB turn the corner? BE teams love candidates that can "bring it" in BB....

(06-25-2010 12:39 PM)miko33 Wrote:  ECU fans,
I know that your schools has traditionally beaten up on Memphis and UCF regularly in CUSA east. But now that ECU doesn't have Skip Holtz as a coach anymore, will you FB program survive the radical change to a new coach? This is not meant to be mean spirited or flaming, just an honest question.

Also, will ECU BB turn the corner? BE teams love candidates that can "bring it" in BB....

I'm not taking it as a flame but a good question. Really in some area's I think we will be better, some the same and some I have questions. Only time will really tell.

One thing I know is the new staff are conducting a lot more camps as I read this week we had over 2000 kids come through the camps. At the prospect camp they had around a 1000 come through. We are going after a lot more high profile players and actually getting them on campus. Will this translate into comittments from them? Who knows, but getting them on campus is half the battle.

I believe our offense will be a lot better, more versitle and that should help alot. Maybe not so many nail bitters, play to win through 3 quarters and hold on the 4th.

We will surprise some people because they don't think we have the talent to run this offense but the new staff has been very surprised with the talent, speed and overall talent here. We have several very good receivers that they are high on.

Our biggest ??? is defensive line. Lots of kids played last year but we lost a lot of NFL talent there. Linebackers and DB's will be solid.

Kicking game is ???? but we lost our bowl game with an experienced kickers so who knows what might happen there. Punter who knows. he's now with the Giants.

I'm thinking we may go 8-5.

You didn't answer his question about ECU basketball.

This year is a difficult one to call. I think most of the old Pirate fans would tell you that 5-7 and up would be great. All of us know what Coach Ruff has to work with and the difficulties of putting a completely new scheme together on both sides of the ball. He will get plenty of slack this year as long as the teams wins the games it should - Memphis, UAB, and Rice, but it all starts with Tulsa. A good showing at home in the opener to demonstrate that the O has picked up on the spread will either give them tons of confidence or could be a pretty big setback if they fall flat. Marshall is changing just as much as ECU, but I feel like ECU got the better staff and has the better players to work with so that's probably an expected win as well. UCF is honestly due a win against ECU, but I'm pretty sure Coach Ruff will be pushing the fact that they haven't beaten ECU but once to motivate them. Plus they get ECU right before both UH and USM, so there is always the chance UCF could look past ECU. To me, SMU and USM are the two conference games that are the most problematic. I'm sure ECU won't be favored in either, but losing to those two teams shouldn't be looked at as a failure in a coaching staff's first year. As for OOC games, 1-3 is likely, possibly 2-2. Ruff is an ECU alum. He knows the importance of the NCSU and UNC games. Beat State, a very good showing against UNC and he will have won over any doubters within the Pirate Nation regardless of the rest of the season.

ECU football will be just fine post Holtz. Skip was a great hire and did a lot of great things for the program, but I think a little farther down the road Ruffin will be looked as as just as good, if not a better hire. I find it really hard to believe that Ruffin would leave ECU, and he has the potential to be the HC for a very long time. The first year may be a little rocky, but that's to be expected.

Basketball... I don't really want to touch that one. Get back to me in about 10 years. It's hard to recruit against the ACC, not to mention the Richmond's and Davidson's that play really good basketball on a consistant basis. It will take a lot of work and commitment from Lebo to turn the program around.

What kind of coach is Skip Holtz? I've never seen him in action, but is he like the lunatic that used to coach USF or is he more like Brian Kelly? Maybe he's neither of those two?

(06-25-2010 01:15 PM)miko33 Wrote:  What kind of coach is Skip Holtz? I've never seen him in action, but is he like the lunatic that used to coach USF or is he more like Brian Kelly? Maybe he's neither of those two?

A good coach, not much like USF's old coach at all. Most ECU fans have no bad feelings about him leaving for a BCS program, but about they way he handled it in the last hours.

Skip plays a B10 style of ball.

(06-25-2010 01:52 PM)LUVECU Wrote:  Skip plays a B10 style of ball.

I assume that means he likes power football? In the BE right now, I would say that 3 teams in the BE today try to run power (Pitt, RU and UCONN), and at least two of the 3 use a pro style offense (Pitt and UCONN). I think Syracuse is looking to run a pro style offense too, and I'm not so sure about Rutgers as to what offense they run. If USF runs an offense like this too, then that will be an interesting conference dynamic.

What kind of offense is ECU expected to run with the new coach? With the new coach, do you think you will be able to better recruit your traditional recruiting grounds?

(06-25-2010 01:57 PM)miko33 Wrote:  

(06-25-2010 01:52 PM)LUVECU Wrote:  Skip plays a B10 style of ball.

I assume that means he likes power football? In the BE right now, I would say that 3 teams in the BE today try to run power (Pitt, RU and UCONN), and at least two of the 3 use a pro style offense (Pitt and UCONN). I think Syracuse is looking to run a pro style offense too, and I'm not so sure about Rutgers as to what offense they run. If USF runs an offense like this too, then that will be an interesting conference dynamic.

What kind of offense is ECU expected to run with the new coach? With the new coach, do you think you will be able to better recruit your traditional recruiting grounds?

We are going to be running the Texas Tech Air Raid offense. Pretty much the same thing you have seem them and Houston run in the past. Lincoln Riley is our new OC and Leach thought very highly of him. My big concern is that he is very young, only 26, but he has been in the Texas Tech system since around 2002.

The Pirates will run Mike Leach's Texas Tech Air Raid Offense under McNeill. A mostly passing attack, with RBs running sometimes, but also catching the ball out of the backfield.

Skip definitely liked to run the ball -- and why not, with RBs like Chris Johnson and Domenique Lindsay. But I'm pretty sure it's safe to say that Lindsay will be our last 1000-yard back for a while -- in terms of yards on the ground, anyway.

Our new OC is a kid named Lincoln Riley -- a Mike Leach disciple. And Leach himself has said that Riley understands the Air Raid like no one else under Leach at Tech. Riley called the Offensive game during Tech's bowl win after Leach Was fired. And Ruff, of course, was interim head coach for that game.

Expectations are high at ECU, and given the regime change, I think six wins and a bowl this year will be a great start to the McNeill era.

The talent at receiver is there. The OL is in good shape. A really good battle for QB is shaping up between Dominique Davis (former Boston College starter) and Brad Wornick.

The DL has to be rebuilt, but we do have some returing players with some experience there.

Skip rode our kicker to defeat in the bowl game against Arkansas. The kid missed FIVE kicks during the game -- and stubborn 'ol Skip kept sending him back out there when the game was on the line. Skip, let someone else try, please? Choke city. Very painful loss.

The new regime is giving a lot of focus to special teams, so hopefully we'll develop a solid kicker and punter.

As for basketball, it's always struck me as supreme irony that we've had some success in our signature sport -- a situation where there's a barrier holding us back (non-AQ status). But in basketball -- a sport with no glass ceillings -- we haven't been able to build a decent program.

A lot of it has to do with recruiting not only against the ACC, but playing in the shadow of some of that conference's biggest basketball powers, like UNC and Duke. We did beat NC State in Greenville. Also Marquette. But those kinds of wins have been rare.

Jeff Lebo played for UNC. It'll be interesting to see how he recruits, and if he can motivate his players to achieve more.

(06-25-2010 01:57 PM)miko33 Wrote:  [quote='LUVECU' pid='5537259' dateline='1277491921']
Skip plays a B10 style of ball.

"I assume that means he likes power football? In the BE right now, I would say that 3 teams in the BE today try to run power (Pitt, RU and UCONN), and at least two of the 3 use a pro style offense (Pitt and UCONN). I think Syracuse is looking to run a pro style offense too, and I'm not so sure about Rutgers as to what offense they run. If USF runs an offense like this too, then that will be an interesting conference dynamic."

While Skips brand of football sure was boring it produced great results. I will be interested though to see how his defense fairs since the DC, Greg Hudson, under his tenure here at ECU went to florida state. Skips philosophies are to win and capitolize on the turn over battle. On Defense, keep everything in front of you and when the QB throws a bad pass make them pay. Not a lot of blitzes or high risk stuff. On Offense run, run, run and then side line pass. Dont turn the ball over and win the field position game so that the conservative offense only has to drive it 5O yrds for a score. Boring for sure, but against the pass happy offenses in C-USA it worked more often than not.

(06-25-2010 01:57 PM)miko33 Wrote:  

(06-25-2010 01:52 PM)LUVECU Wrote:  Skip plays a B10 style of ball.

I assume that means he likes power football? In the BE right now, I would say that 3 teams in the BE today try to run power (Pitt, RU and UCONN), and at least two of the 3 use a pro style offense (Pitt and UCONN). I think Syracuse is looking to run a pro style offense too, and I'm not so sure about Rutgers as to what offense they run. If USF runs an offense like this too, then that will be an interesting conference dynamic.

What kind of offense is ECU expected to run with the new coach? With the new coach, do you think you will be able to better recruit your traditional recruiting grounds?

ECU in the 90s was very offensive oriented as many Independant/Non-AQ schools had to be to compete. Over the last few years ECU has been known more for its defense than offense. A big switch when Holtz came to town and his DC had everything to do with that. The offense had alot of talent but they never seemed to capitalize on that. Somewhat anemic. Holtz is obviously gone but even though alot of seniors exited we were left when a number of year's worth of defensive recruits. I'm praying that means we'll be more solid than people are thinking. We have a new offensive scheme where the offensive talent left over hopefully should be able to shine in that type of system. Only time will tell. Without seeing them play it's hard to know.

Same with basketball. I think ECU's biggest issue was commitment to the program. That seems to have taken a major turn with the hire (very speculative and subjective I know). We brought in Ralph Sampson's son (if that means anything...it is higher profile than we're used to) and a new $16M practice facility is on the way. Even though basketball has been horrific in the past we have had some pretty tough fan environments over the years with Navy (back when I was in school), Memphis, Cincy and Louisville. I think we'll see more of that with Lebo. Definitley more of it if we were to get invited to the Big East. But hey, ECU has to do the legwork first.

Like football, it's hard to know how things will turn out without ever seeing the product. With football, the proof is in the pudding. ECU wants to win and compete at the highest level. We are trying very hard to do that and the fanbase backs their goals. Basketball has hints of the same. Both the school and the fans will need to show that for anyone to believe we've turned the corner.

I hope you don't get Kragthorped by your new coach.

(06-25-2010 02:55 PM)adcorbett Wrote:  I hope you don't get Kragthorped by your new coach.

Something all ECU fans are hoping doesn't happen. It will certainly be a nervous first year.

2010 Tidewater Baseball Player of the Year

Since we last hit the floor in basketball:

New head coach, Jeff Lebo, was introduced.

First signee was former Greenville Rose high school star Tony Smith...

April 28, 2010

GREENVILLE, N.C. --- Tony Smith, a former high school standout at Greenville's J.H. Rose High School, has signed a National Letter-of-Intent to play basketball at East Carolina University, head coach Jeff Lebo announced Wednesday.

Smith, who has spent the last two seasons at Seward County (Kan.) Community College, ranks 38th on the Rivals.com list of top 150 junior college players.

"We are very excited about Tony becoming a part of our basketball program," Lebo said. "He brings a lot of versatility to our backcourt positions.

"He is a very significant signee for us because not only is he a local kid and our first signee, but a local kid that elected to come home."

The 6-foot-5, 185-pound Smith averaged 14.3 points, 6.5 assists, 5.2 rebounds and 2.3 steals in 26 games this past season. He led Region VI in assists per game, ranked seventh in steals and 10th in scoring.

Smith earned honorable mention all-conference and all-region honors as a freshman putting up 14.0 points, 3.6 rebounds, 5.9 assists and 2.9 steals per game. "

Second signee was Robert Sampson...

May 13, 2010

GREENVILLE, N.C. --- Robert Sampson, son of three-time Naismith Award winner and former NBA All-Star Ralph Sampson, has signed a National Letter-of-Intent to attend and play basketball at East Carolina University, head coach Jeff Lebo announced Thursday.

"We are excited about Robert's decision to be a Pirate," Lebo said. "Robert has a tremendous upside, potential and pedigree. He has just started to scratch the surface as a player. We are delighted that he has chosen ECU to further his career."

Sampson, a 6-foot-8, 200-pound forward, spent this past season at The Bullis School in Potomac, Md. He averaged 10.4 points and 9.6 rebounds per game, while shooting 52 percent from the floor and 38 percent behind the arc as a senior. Sampson earned All-Interstate Athletic Conference (IAC) Tournament honors, helping Bullis capture the 2010 tournament title.

"Robert's best days are ahead of him," Bullis coach Bruce Kelley said. "He is a long and athletic player who shoots the ball very well. As he continues to grow and get stronger he is going to develop into an outstanding college basketball player."

Sampson began his high school career at Northview High School in suburban Atlanta, where he played for two seasons with his brother, Ralph Sampson III, who is a rising junior at the University of Minnesota.

After moving to Las Vegas midway through his junior season, Sampson enrolled at Henderson International School and joined the team for its final seven games before returning to the east coast for his senior campaign.

Sampson is the second player to join the ECU recruiting class. Greenville native Tony Smith, who played the past two seasons at Seward County (Kan.) Community College, was the first to sign an NLI with the Pirates for the 2010-11 season. "

Third, we landed Miguel Paul from Mizzou.

May 20, 2010

GREENVILLE, N.C. --- East Carolina head basketball coach Jeff Lebo announced on Thursday that Miguel Paul, a member of the basketball team at the University of Missouri the past two years, has been granted a release from his scholarship and will transfer to ECU.

Paul has signed a financial aid agreement as a full scholarship recipient at ECU. He must sit out the 2010-11 season in compliance with NCAA rules regarding transfer student-athletes.

"We are very excited to be able to get a player with Miguel's skills and experience," Lebo said. "He has great speed and quickness with the basketball and he can score from the point. He learned a lot of different things at Missouri and I believe he's going to have impact when he comes in.

"Sitting out is always difficult, but he'll have the opportunity to utilize this year to get better. He's going to push our backcourt players in practice and make them better. I think having to go against Miguel everyday in practice is going to be very beneficial for all our perimeter guys, but especially for Brock."

Paul spent the majority of his time at Missouri as a reserve behind Big XII Defensive Player-of-the-Year J.T. Tiller and all-conference performer Zaire Taylor. He averaged 11.7 minutes in 69 games played behind one of the nation's premiere backcourts.

"I really feel like ECU is a great fit for me," Paul said. "I loved my visit and I really liked the atmosphere surrounding the campus. Coach Lebo has a great background and I really believe that he can he help me become the player I want to be.

"It's going to be hard sitting out this season, but I'm going to work like a pro to get better and make my teammates better. I just want to learn as much as I can so that I can be ready to go next season."

Paul, a native of Winter Haven, Fla., averaged 3.5 points and 12.1 minutes in 31 games played as a sophomore last season. He shot 38.5 percent (15-39) from behind the arc and compiled an assist-to-turnover ratio of better than 2:1. He also tallied 16 steals in his second season as the Tigers reached their second consecutive NCAA Tournament.

The 6-foot-1, 175-pound guard posted career-high numbers in several categories last season. He dropped in a career-best 15 points in 16 minutes against Nebraska, missing just a single field goal and distributed a career-best six assists in 14 minutes versus Oregon. His best all-around floor came at Missouri came against Chattanooga where he scored 14 points, handed out five assists and made three steals in 21 minutes.

As a freshman, Paul helped the Tigers capture the 2009 Big XII Tournament title and advance to the Elite Eight.

He enjoyed a great prep career at Kathleen High School, culminating with back-to-back appearances at in the state championship game as a junior and senior. Paul was named one of the nation's Top 150 prospects by ESPN.com and was listed as a Top15 point guard recruit. He received scholarship offers from Clemson, Memphis, Miami (Fla.), South Florida and St. John's. "

What will this translate to on the court? Nobody knows, but there's really nowhere to go but up.

(all quotes from ecupirates.com)

(06-25-2010 02:55 PM)adcorbett Wrote:  I hope you don't get Kragthorped by your new coach.

You call it Kragthorped we call it "Thompsoned" but I would hate to think we could do that 2 times in less than a decade.

Football - Holtz liked to play uber-conservative. It was boring, and sometimes infuriating, but his record speaks for itself. He had a lot of talent (11 players from this class either drafted or signed Free-Agent deals) but always liked to play it safe. Holtz once said that his "dream" was to win a game 2-0.

The new staff will be the complete opposite. Aggressive offense and defense.

Defense lost 9 starters (only returning the 2 corners). Offense will be breaking in a new QB, and new starters at a few other positions. Combine that with a new coaching staff, and the radically different offensive and defensive schemes and philosophies, and it looks to be a rocky transitional year.

Basketball - Lebo has signed 3 recruits with pretty impressive offer lists. Hopefully, he can motivate one of the laziest groups of players I've ever seen, a little better than the last coach. We'll just have to wait and see.

3-in-one facility (Men's & Women's hoops practice + Volleyball) is up next


$15m price tag & we'll break ground when half is pledged. We're about half way to that now & still in the "silent" phase.

Here's all the construction we have going on now

This sure looks like commitment to me...

(06-25-2010 12:39 PM)miko33 Wrote:  ECU fans,
I know that your schools has traditionally beaten up on Memphis and UCF regularly in CUSA east. But now that ECU doesn't have Skip Holtz as a coach anymore, will you FB program survive the radical change to a new coach? This is not meant to be mean spirited or flaming, just an honest question.

Skip wasn't our first successful football coach. Steve Logan actually lead us to more marquee victories than Skip did. Bill Lewis (Logan's predecessor) was also pretty good...

(06-25-2010 01:00 PM)JHG722 Wrote:  You didn't answer his question about ECU basketball.

If success in basketball is tied to getting talent, then Lebo may do alright at ECU. Thus far he has gotten a former ESPN top 150 player (Miguel Paul) to transfer to East Carolina; and has signed one of the top JC players in the nation (Tony Smith) and allegedly "one of the better unknown prospects" in Robert Sampson (Ralph's son); but we will have to wait and see, especially when a phrase like better unknown prospects is attached to a recruit, because in this age of constant camping you almost have to question why the guy is unknown.

Anywho, the key for Lebo is getting the returning players to give a damn and play up to their potential. The returning guys have talent, but last year they didn't play with nearly enough pride. We will see what Lebo can do with these guys, because everyone returns from last year's team. By the way here is a little more on the new players:

http://www.reflector.com/ecu/smith-happy-be-home-38264

http://insider.espn.go.com/ncb/recruitin...eason=2010

http://rds.yahoo.com/_ylt=A0oG767UDCVM3M...uel00.html