Pirates get midweek exposure

If the East Carolina football team can treat a Tuesday game day like a normal work day, a commanding lead in Conference USA East could be the result.

Playing on a Tuesday for the first time since a 2003 home loss to Houston, the Pirates will be in search of a 4-1 record in C-USA when they kick off tonight at 8 against Memphis. A win would mean a perfect 3-0 mark against division opponents for defending league champion ECU (4-3).

With virtually every other team in the division still in the hunt, it will be the Tigers (2-5, 1-3 C-USA) trying to climb out of the cellar tonight inside the Liberty Bowl.

Fifth-year ECU coach Skip Holtz has won three straight against Memphis, but admits he's not wild about playing a Tuesday game, which begins a long, strange stretch of the schedule for ECU, but one that includes three straight appearances on national television.

“I love the exposure, and I enjoy going home on a Tuesday night when there's a college game and having the opportunity to sit down and eat dinner and watch the second half, but now that I have to go be part of it, I don't know that I'm as excited about it,” Holtz said of the game, the first of three consecutive games on ESPN networks for ECU.

After tonight, the Pirates are off until they host Virginia Tech next Thursday night, Nov. 5. After that, ECU plays on Nov. 15 at Tulsa in a rematch of last year's C-USA title game.

In order to earn a second straight championship game berth, the Pirates will have to recreate some of the dominance they enjoyed in last weekend's 49-13 rout of winless Rice.

The ECU offense rolled behind senior quarterback Patrick Pinkney (231 pass yards, three touchdowns), junior wide receiver/returner Dwayne Harris (nine catches, 128 yards, two TD, 92-yard kickoff return touchdown) and senior running back Dominique Lindsay (78 yards).

The Pirates could be without Lindsay tonight after he injured his ankle against Rice and sat out Wednesday's practice last week before returning to the field Thursday.

Harris has been electric for the Pirates in recent weeks, scoring five touchdowns in two games, including two straight games with kickoff return TDs. He leads ECU in receptions (42), receiving yards (465), touchdowns (eight) and all-purpose yards (1,073).

“He's starting to really understand the offense,” Holtz said of Harris, who has scored on a reception, a rush and a return this season, and who has also thrown an 80-yard touchdown pass in his career. “That has given us the ability to move Dwayne around. Dwayne is no longer a stationary target. People have to know where he is.”

The Memphis defense has fallen to seventh in C-USA, allowing 405 yards a game after the Tigers lost three of their last four games. ECU could get a boost in its red zone offense tonight, as Memphis is the most porous team in the league inside its own 20-yard line, allowing points 92.6 percent of the time.

Senior linebacker Greg Jackson leads the Tigers with 31 tackles, an average of 7.1 per game, while senior defensive back Deante Lamar has 26 and junior DB Darius Davis 20. Defensive lineman Mike McDonald leads the Memphis defense with three sacks.

On offense, the Tigers will go to battle behind quarterback Will Hudgens, the third man to take snaps for Memphis this season and one of two passers hurt in last year's 30-10 loss to the Pirates. He'll undoubtedly be looking for his biggest targets, 6-foot-9 receiver Carlos Singleton and counterpart Duke Calhoun.

With running back Curtis Steele still in the Memphis backfield, head coach Tommy West's team has a slew of familiar faces.

“It seems like when you pull the Memphis file out, it's the same names,” Holtz said. “It's (quarterback Arkelon) Hall, it's Hudgens, it's Steele, it's Singleton, it's Calhoun. All of a sudden, they're seniors and they're playing really well as an offense right now.”

Calhoun is third in C-USA with his 95.1 reception yards per game, and has rolled up 40 catches for 666 yards and five touchdowns this season.

West's offense is fifth in the league with an average of 362.1 yards per game, but it will be tested by a surging ECU defense now fourth in C-USA, allowing exactly 10 fewer yards than the Tigers are gaining.

Against Calhoun and Singleton, it will be a day of big assignments for the ECU secondary, which is led by senior free safety Van Eskridge (52 tackles, two interceptions).