East Carolinian

Issue date: 9/9/08 Section: Sports

Media Credit: Aileen Devlin

Media Credit: Aileen Devlin

This time there was no Darius Reynaud and no Owen Schmitt. This time there was no explosiveness and not even a touchdown scored by West Virginia.

This time, the Mountaineers didn't stand a chance.

The Pirates' defense dominated No. 8 WVU this past Saturday by limiting Pat White, daring someone other than the Heisman Trophy candidate to beat them. The Mountaineers had no answer for that strategy and left Greenville with a 24-3 loss.

In former coach Rich Rodriguez's offense, what made West Virginia so dangerous was the plethora of weapons that were on the field at one time. If a defense tried to focus all of its attention on stopping Pat White or Steve Slaton, the Mountaineers' "other parts," Darius Reynaud in particular, would make a big play and be the difference in the game.

Two years ago, ECU was down one touchdown to the Mountaineers in the fourth quarter when Reynaud took a simple screen pass and sliced through the Pirate defense for a 60-yard touchdown reception that put the game out of reach.

ECU did a great job of containing Steve Slaton that day, holding him to a season-low 80 rushing yards but it was Reynaud who made the difference with a game-high 168 all-purpose yards. Last season, Reynaud had two touchdown catches and 112 offensive yards in WVU's 48-7 win in Morgantown, W.Va.

Reynaud is now with the Minnesota Vikings and on Saturday, WVU looked very vanilla and disorganized on offense. The Mountaineers' receiving corps, trying to fill the void left by Reynaud, managed just six catches for 39 yards. To put that in perspective, ECU's Dwayne Harris had two more catches and 29 more yards by himself than WVU's receivers combined.

"The past two years, [Darius] Reynaud really burned us, along with Pat White," said Van Eskridge, ECU's starting free safety. "We knew coming in that we were going to have to stop those bubble screens and really limit their yards after the catch. Basically, the way to take care of that is to get 11 guys running to the football, and that's what happened today."

ECU coach Skip Holtz, who now has the Pirates ranked No. 14 in the nation, adamantly praised the gameplan on defense in his postgame press conference. The Pirates' plan was to play their base defense and eliminate the big plays that West Virginia has thrived on lately.

"I thought Greg Hudson and the defensive staff did a phenomenal job of putting together a gameplan to keep this high-powered offense in check," Holtz said. "They did an unbelievable job. ...Their isn't a coverage that Pat White hasn't seen in the past three years and the plan wasn't to out-scheme them. Let's play fast, play physical, line up and keep the ball in front of us."

ECU dominated the line of scrimmage on both sides of the ball under this gameplan. White was sacked three times and never really looked comfortable at Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium. He frequently aborted pass plays because of the pressure ECU was causing, opting to escape from the pocket and use his feet instead. Although White led WVU in carries and rushing yards, he only threw for 72 and the Mountaineers' longest pass play of the game was 13 yards.

"Our defensive line was amazing and the penetration that they were creating made things so much easier for the rest of the defense," said linebacker Pierre Bell.

In last season's matchup, the Mountaineers shredded ECU's defense with 599 yards on offense and had four different players score touchdowns in a true display of versatility. This time, aside from one long run by speedy running back Noel Devine, WVU's longest play from scrimmage was a 23-yard run by White. Unlike years past, WVU displayed an offense that was way too dependent on its quarterback and lacked playmakers on the outside.

The Pirates stressed the importance of eliminating the big play in preparation for WVU's offense.

"I watched the entire game from last year every day this week," Eskridge said. "I came over early some days and stayed late on some days. We also watched their film against Villanova [in week one] and the film study went a long way in helping us out today."

Down 7-0, WVU's first possession resulted in a turnover; something first-year head coach Bill Stewart said the Mountaineers never really recovered from.

"After that [fumble], we could not get into a rhythm," said Stewart. "...I thought we had some big running plays, but we just ran up against a good defense today."

What the Mountaineers ran into was a defense that had the perfect gameplan, and a group of players who were committed to that gameplan.



This writer can be contacted at sports@theeastcarolinian.com

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