It took a lot of phone calls, flights, rental cars, taxis, hotel rooms and a whole lot of home-cooked meals, but Ruffin McNeill got his guys.

The new East Carolina head football coach finalized his first ECU recruiting class on Wednesday’s national signing day, getting 18 new signatures to help compensate for the loss of 28 senior players from last year’s Conference USA champion squad.

It might never get any tougher.

McNeill was charged with the unenviable task of trying to keep the recruits who ultimately signed national letters of intent on Wednesday on board with the Pirates despite the fact most of them had committed to former coach Skip Holtz. On top of that, McNeill was given just two weeks to do it after being named the new ECU coach on Jan. 21.

But after traveling some long miles with recruiting coordinator Donnie Kirkpatrick — including being snowed-in last Saturday in Maryland — McNeill personally visited 17 of the 18 households of Wednesday’s newcomers.

“Today, seeing that last fax come across the fax machine was an awesome feeling,” said McNeill, who played defensive back for the Pirates in the late 1970s and later served one season as an ECU assistant coach. “The special thing about it, going into those young men’s homes and meeting with their parents, they each gave us their word they would be attending. They each held true to their word and they all stood fast by that.”

Like any great recruiter, once McNeill made it through the front door, the commits were mostly ready to tell him they were keeping their word, often doing so at the dinner table.

“Everybody wanted to feed me. I guess they saw the press conference, so we had a lot of meals,” McNeill said. “One day we had to eat three meals and all of them were delicious. Probably the scariest thing was one day trying to remember what state and what city I was in. But it was a fun challenge. It was a whirlwind but I knew what to expect.”

McNeill described his living room visits as a feeling-out process in which he tried to give recruits and their families a level of comfort.

The coach knew before walking into all but one of those homes that the players had committed to Holtz and not him. Holtz announced Jan. 14 he was leaving ECU to become the new head coach at USF, meaning the commits were left in limbo and that McNeill had to reel them back in if he wanted to coach them at ECU.

That meant convincing them he was every bit as committed to ECU as they had been.

“I made sure that each home understood that. When we established that with each home and each family member, then the conversation just took off,” said McNeill, who has already added eight members to his coaching staff and will likely name the final member before the end of the week. “I told them what I believe in, and academically what we believe in here.”

It was only then, McNeill said, that the football talk began in earnest.

Seven athletes in the class are already enrolled in school. That includes two mid-year signees, offensive lineman Diavalo Simpson (East Mississippi Community College) and defensive back Bradley Jacobs (Mississippi Gulf Coast C.C.), who had previously been announced as new members of the team but who count toward this recruiting class.

Also potentially adding to the total number are a pair of 2009 signees, running back Damonte Terry (Laurinburg/Scotland High School) and linebacker Justin Dixon (Smithfield/Smithfield-Selma), who did not qualify academically after signing but who have been in school at ECU since the fall. If they meet academic requirements in time, they will also join the Pirates for August camp.

In all, the signing class includes players from 10 different states.

Contact Nathan Summers at nsummers@reflector.com or (252)329-9595.

ECU’S 2010 RECRUITING CLASS

Athletes signing letters of intent Wednesday were:

DB Detric Allen, 6-foot, 180 pounds (Norwood/South Stanly)

DB/QB Desi Brown, 6-2, 190 (Webster Groves, Mo./Webster Groves)

QB Shane Carden, 6-3, 205 (Bellaire, Tex./Episcopal)

DE Maurice Falls, 6-2, 210 (Belmont/South Point)

OL Anthony Garrett, 6-5, 305 (Prairie Village, Kan./Fort Scott C.C.)

LB Jacob Geary, 6-3, 220 (Hillsborough/Cedar Ridge)

OL Drew Gentry, 6-6, 285 (Tallahassee, Fla./North Florida Christian)

LB Jeremy Grove, 6-1, 231 (Ijamsville, Md./Gov. Thomas Johnson)

DE Mack Helms, 6-3, 275 (Tallahassee, Fla./Leon)

OL Taylor Hudson, 6-5, 290 (Greenville, S.C./Mauldin)

DB/WR Lamar Ivey, 6-1, 182 (Mebane/Eastern Alamance)

DE/LB Derrell Johnson, 6-1, 218 (Baltimore, Md./Wyoming Seminary)

WR/DB Damon Magazu, 5-11, 175 (Charlotte/Providence)

RB Alex Owah, 5-11, 190 (Harrisonburg, Va./Hargrave Military Academy)

DE Lee Pegues, 6-2, 255 (Bennettsville, S.C./Marlboro County)

WR Torian Richardson, 5-10, 169 (Greer, S.C./Byrnes)

DE Chrishon Rose, 6-4, 275 (Forestville, Md./Bishop McNamara)

LB/DE Terry Williams, 6-1, 255 (Loganville, Ga./Grayson)