GREENVILLE, N.C. (AP) — For all the firsts East Carolina experienced during its rapid rise to prominence last season, there’s one thing that group didn’t do.
The Pirates (7-4, 6-1) can take care of that nagging detail — home-field advantage for the Conference USA championship game — by beating Southern Mississippi this weekend. Last year’s bunch, which vaulted up the national rankings and briefly threatened to bust the BCS before a midseason fade, had to go on the road to win its first league title.
But don’t expect Skip Holtz to use his pregame speech to tell his team how important its regular-season finale is.
“I’m not going to talk to them Friday night about, ‘Look at everything riding on this game,’” Holtz said Monday. “The last thing you want to do is mount more pressure on them so they go out there all tense and tight.
“I want them to understand what’s on the table, what we’re playing for ... but I don’t want to turn and put those things on the table Friday night before they run out on the field,” he added. “I’d like to put it out early in the week ... and then let’s turn and put that stuff behind us and now let’s just talk about Southern Miss.”
That’s because, for everything the Pirates can gain by beating the Golden Eagles (7-4, 5-2), they have just as much to lose in what amounts to a winner-take-all game for the East Division title. A win by Southern Miss — which has dominated the rivalry — would send coach Larry Fedora’s team to next week’s C-USA title game.
“We’re exactly where we said we wanted to be. We wanted to be playing for it at this time of the year,” Fedora said. “We know we’re going to have to go out there and play our best game of the season, and we’re due because we haven’t done that this season yet.”
The Golden Eagles have won 11 of 13 meetings and haven’t lost in Greenville since 1994.
“There’s a lot of great things that you can sit and motivate them with, but I think the biggest motivating factor is going to be to have the opportunity to play for a conference championship by winning this game, and it’s going to have to be the opportunity to play Southern Miss,” Holtz said. “All the other things on the outside are neat little tidbits and stats for everybody and the players to look at and go, ‘Wow, look at what these guys can accomplish.’”
The Southern Miss-East Carolina winner will face the West champion — No. 25 Houston or SMU — on Dec. 5 with a spot in the Liberty Bowl on the line.
That East Carolina is the league’s only team with one loss in C-USA play represents a significant measure of improvement for a once offensively-challenged team that started 1-2 with losses to West Virginia and North Carolina and a closer-than-expected win against Appalachian State, scoring a combined five points in the second halves of those games.
The Pirates have reeled off at least 37 points in four straight league games.
“For these players, knowing the goals that they set, and knowing what’s important to them, they want to play for a conference championship,” Holtz said. “Here we are, walking into the 12th game of the season, and we still have an opportunity to fulfill that goal. That’s a heck of a job by these players and a heck of a job that they’ve done.”
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C-USA East on the line for Southern Miss, ECU
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