East
Carolina’s 45-13 loss to
Tulsa
on Saturday was a glimpse at what the last two seasons looked like in
Pirate Land.
This season had been
different; this season was a different attitude, a different team.
Get up on this years team by 10, 20, or 30
points and they will dig down deep and fight back.
They did it versus
Wake Forest,
West Virginia, and
Memphis
each time giving themselves a chance to win late in the game.
Not this week: the ECU team that we had come
to despise reared its ugly head on Saturday.
After playing Tulsa
heads up for 30 minutes, and even leading at halftime, the Pirates came
out in the second half discombobulated. Watching
the game from the sidelines, you would have thought Tulsa
went in at halftime and came out the USC Trojans. They
ran it, they threw it, and they completely shut down East Carolina’s
offense in the second half. Aside from
everything Tulsa was doing
to the Pirates, ECU didn’t do much to help themselves.
The turning point in the game came in the third quarter, with the ECU
up 13-10, Bradon Fractious got a roughing the kicker penalty that
resulted in a first down and a touchdown a few plays later.
Shortly after that, Chris Johnson fumbled on a
play where he wasn’t even hit very hard.
Those
two plays completely took the wind out of the Pirates, and it was at
that point, I believe they threw in the towel.
