Different styles, same result

ECU, Tulsa arrive at championship

By Nathan Summers
The Daily Reflector

Tuesday, December 02, 2008

While the two teams who will battle Saturday for the Conference USA championship are football opposites, they’ve had similar seasons in some respects.

The Tulsa Golden Hurricane will host the noon conference title game ready to unleash C-USA’s deadliest offense. Visiting East Carolina will employ its league-best defense in an effort to put the same hex on Tulsa it has on five of its last six opponents.

Despite their marked differences, both ECU (8-4 overall, 6-2 C-USA) and Tulsa (10-2, 7-1) were adorned in attention and speculation this season about the teams being the next to upset the balance of the NCAA’s Bowl Championship Series.

ECU had a brief glimpse in the national spotlight after its 3-0 start sailed the Pirates to No. 14 in the national rankings. Head coach Todd Graham’s Tulsa team became the first Golden Hurricane squad since 1942 to start a campaign 8-0.

Both of Saturday’s combatants did their part in shining a brighter light on C-USA football in the process.

“We’re going to dare to be great. That’s one of our goals,” said Graham, now in his second season at Tulsa and 20-6 in that time. “Two years ago, we put it on the wall that we wanted to be conference champions and graduate 100 percent of our players. And we had the goal of going undefeated.”

Despite Tulsa making its third appearance in the C-USA championship in the game’s four years of existence, Graham has yet to make good on the goal of the C-USA title as the team’s head coach.

Graham was on the staff with former head coach Steve Kragthorpe when Tulsa won the first C-USA championship game in 2005, but Graham’s team was hammered in the game last season by UCF.

Like ECU in week four at N.C. State, Tulsa’s unbeaten ride came to a halt against a nonconference BCS opponent. Arkansas upended the Golden Hurricane, 30-23, in week nine, and then Tulsa was romped by Houston, 70-30, the following week in C-USA.

“It lets a lot of the wind out of your sails,” Graham said of his team’s successive losses. “We played the worst game we’ve played in two years after that first loss. It affects you a great deal.”

Fourth-year ECU head coach Skip Holtz agreed that he and his team didn’t handle their first loss well. The Pirates, too, followed their initial setback of the season by being thumped by Houston, part of a three-game slide for ECU.

But both coaches admit that, at least to an extent, having the chance of being the next 12-0 BCS buster can be as much an inspiration as a distraction.

“I think a lot of the reason why we’re 10-2 is because we set the mark at 12-0,” Graham said. “That’s where our goals are going to be here. Period. Our program is expected to win championships.”

Holtz is quick to point out his own team’s expectations after a 3-0 start soared too quickly. As the attention from the outside steadily grew following wins over Virginia Tech, West Virginia and Tulane, ECU’s loss at N.C. State became a defining point in the season.

According to Graham, the pressure of being in the spotlight provides unique, invaluable experience.

“Every week that it goes on, it becomes more and more of a distraction, but I think you get experience from that, and I think next time we’re 8-0 we’ll be better at it,” Graham said.