Game Two Preview: The Hokie Pokie vs A Pirate's Life For Me

                                    

Stewart Mandel of Sports Illustrated has started referring to the ACC as the "Virginia Tech Conference" this year due to their dominance since joining the league. So now the question should be, what do we call the state of North Carolina?

Since losing to, you guessed it, ECU in 1992, the Hokies have not lost a road game in the state of NC. This streak spans over 14 games, and covers every 1-A team in the state. Any ECU fans reading this right now are all thinking the same thing: what are you talking about a-hole, we beat VT in 2008 in Charlotte. Yes, that is true, but that was technically a neutral site game. The reason I differ between the two is because the Hokies since joining the ACC have usually excelled in road games, while neutral site games are a different story. (Sidenote: in my almost 26 years of life, I cannot remember a single neutral site game VT has won in which I've been in attendance; bowl games, championship games, season openers)

East Carolina Offense


Clearly the offense under Ruffin McNeill is the strong point of this program currently. They run an Air Raid philosophy that Ruffin brought with him from Texas Tech. This is a quick, pass happy attack that looks to put up the points and rack up the yards.

Last year the Pirates averaged 36 points a game, and matched that total in Week 1 of 2011 against SCar. They have lost their best receiver from last year to graduation, but have plenty of capable bodies to fill in for all those receptions. Usually the gameplan is to get off quick passes that allow their players to get the ball in space, and earn most of their yards with the ball in a playmaker's hands as opposed to in the air. Another benefit of this is it allows for the QB to sucker up the secondary and hit a wideout on a stop-and-go route later when a corner tries to bite on the INT.

For the Hokies to be successful on D, they need to be disciplined and make the tackle on the first attempt. If the receivers aren't allowed to rack up the YAC, it will force ECU to start taking shots deeper down the field to get the first down, which plays into VT's pass rush abilities and skilled secondary. When playing defense against this type of offense, you can't worry about the number of catches, or the QB's completion percentage, but only about the number of yards you allow once the catch is made.

Since ECU will probably throw the ball about 40-50 times a game, they won't run very often. With inexperience at the RB position, look for most runs to come on a read option play, with dual threat QB Dominique Davis probably keeping the ball as often as he hands it off. The linebackers will need to play smart in their assignments, and have quick eyes to try and not bite on any fakes.

East Carolina Defense


The upside to the fact that last year ECU finished 120 out of 120 in total defense is they have no where to go but up. Last week's 56 points given up against the Gamecocks is a little misleading, due to the number of non-offensive points and short fields Head Ball Coach had to work with throughout the game.

While ECU was able to actually keep the total yards down last week, they weren't ever able to keep SCar out of the endzone. One thing VT has prided itself on in the past, both with strong and weak D's, was if they bent, they hardly broke. Inside the redzone, the Hokie D has historically been good at keep TD's off the board, or at least force teams to use every play available to them to get 7. East Carolina did not have this satisfaction in Charlotte, giving up TD's instead of FG's whenever the Cocks got deep into Pirate Territory.

Like App. State last week, the Hokies' opponent in Week 2 has switched from a 4-3 to a 3-4 base formation. While this possibly fits their personnel better, it still leaves them weak against the run. Last week, star running back Marcus Lattimore and semi-mobile QB Stephen Garcia were able to find the holes and get a couple levels deep before running into any would-be tacklers. This plays right into VT's strengths as they have their own star running back and semi-mobile QB. We'll find out if the Pirates change their tactics this week in that regard, but for now, expect the Gobblers to control both the ball and the clock on the ground. If there is a strength to the ECU defense, it is their senior-led secondary, and Coach O'Cain will hope he is never forced to make The Lieutenant try to pick it apart in his first career road start until the situation backs up that call.

The (Not Really An) Intangible


Usually when speaking of intangibles in a football game, we expect to discuss special teams, or turnovers, or other oft overlooked items that play into a 60 minute game of football. For this matchup, I decided to go a different route, and found something else that both schools have in common.

Since the mid 1960's, the VT Corp of Cadets have used a cannon nicknamed "Skipper" in honor of President Kennedy at all home football games. It is carted on the field for pregame ceremonies, then moved outside the stadium and is fired off after each Hokie score. Depending on your location in or out of the stadium, the boom can be deafening, but many Hokie faithful will gladly trade their hearing for a few seconds for what the sound signifies.


East Carolina also has their own cannon that they use throughout the game to represent their Pirate theme. I'll be honest; pirates can be pretty bad ass, and some of the best scenes in pirate movies have always been the big climactic battle scene at the end, where two or more ships are side-by-side, firing those huge weapons at each other, creating chaos among the sword fighters, with parts of the ship exploding and falling apart all around the battle. Sounds to me like this might be a pretty intimidating distraction for visiting players and fans to see out of the corner of their eyes throughout the course of the game. Let's take a look:

Oh...nevermind.

Score Prediction: Gobblers: 45  Purple Pirates: 17

P.S. (Do you put P.S. in pieces of writing other than letters?) Due to work (the thing I actually get paid to do), moving (becoming a yearly tradition), and the fact I know little-to-nothing about Arkansas St. (I wouldn't put money on guessing their nickname, and I've looked it up about five times in the past month), my "Preview" article next week may be absent or at most very short. I apologize for this, and will definitely do my ACC game predictions for the week, but I'm not expecting to write a lot about how VT is going to easily win against a unknown program.

H-O-K-I-E-S HOKIES!!!