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ECU Basketball Not Far Away

East Carolina will open this year’s basketball season against Indiana State in two weeks in the first round of the eighth-annual Gulf Coast Showcase at Hertz Arena in the Fort Myers area of Florida as a part of bdG Sports’ Beach Bubble tournament.

It will be the first matchup between the Pirates and Sycamores since 1978 and just the second overall. ECU will then take on Austin Peay or Omaha one day later before finishing the trip with one more game the following day.

ECU then returns to open up the home slate against Radford before taking on UNC-W, North Florida and James Madison in the comfortable confines of Minges Coliseum. While there won’t be much in terms of early fan participation, the team is excited to get started.

Pirate head coach Joe Dooley has been slowly building up a roster with the kind of length and size that is commensurate with what it takes to be successful in the American Athletic Conference. His team is getting ready and Dooley talked on Thursday about how things are going at the moment.

“Obviously we’ve been getting after it pretty good in practice. We had a couple of days off this week then we will be off this Saturday. We will start preparing this Sunday for Indiana State the following week and we are starting to get the guys relatively healthy so let’s go try to keep the train on the track,” said Dooley on Thursday.

Dooley says Jayden Gardner has missed some time in practice but is back now and ready to go.

“From a physical standpoint we’ve been pretty good. We’ve had guys out here and there like you usually do,” Dooley told PirateIllustrated.com, “We’ve had some ankles, we’ve had some contact tracing and a little bit of everything. Jayden has been back full throttle. He was out probably the first two and a half weeks. By the latter part of the week we will have 17 of the 18 guys out on the court.”

Jayden Gardner was one of 20 players on the initial 2021 Julius Erving Small Forward of the Year Watch List, the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame earlier this month.

Gardner led the AAC in scoring at 19.7 point last season. He finished third in rebounding at 9.2 boards a game and was fourth in both field goal percentage (.521) and minutes played (34.5 mpg).

He received second-team all-conference honors a year ago and was unanimously voted to the preseason all-conference first-team by the league’s head coaches this year.

In addition to being The American’s top returning scorer, Gardner is also its top returning rebounder. Gardner’s 23 career double-doubles are also the most of any active player in the league.

Around Gardner is considerable returning talent along with some new guys who are poised to make a splash.

Three seven-footers in Charles Coleman, Ludgy Dubaut and Edra Luster give the Pirates a good base in the paint along with Derrick Quansah at 6-11 who transferred in from Hargrave Military Academy.

At 6-7, Bitumba Baruti got better and better last year along with J.J. Miles at 6-7 and 6-5 guard Tristen Newton. Meanwhile, Tyrie Jackson and J.J. Miles are back at guard along with Tremont Robinson-White and highly touted newcomer Noah Farrakhan at the point.

“We are a little bit longer. We can play some bigger lineups. You could see some lineups where you could have Tristen Newton out there at the point with J.J. Miles and (Brandon) Suggs, Jayden (Gardner) and a big where you’re really long and athletic,” Dooley told PI.

ECU also has the ability to go smaller if needed with Farrakhan, Robinson-White maybe even playing together at times.

“I do think we could play smaller. Bitumba has had a good fall. Hopefully he can keep that up where you could maybe play Jayden and Bitumba as a small five against different teams. I do think we have some versatility that we can change our lineups a little bit.”

With increased experience comes more familiarity with the league and Dooley says that could pay dividends this season.

“Familiarity breeds confidence. They do have a lot more confidence in each other and a lot more maturity in the way the practice and in the way they act and interact,” Dooley told PirateIllustrated.com, “It’s noticeable. Guys usually make their biggest jump between their first and second year and I think you can see that.”

“Brandon Suggs is a lot more mature. Tristen is a lot more mature. J.J. Miles and all of these guys are a lot more comfortable. I think it shows when they play. We can transition from drill to drill seamlessly now. It’s much more efficient.”

Stay tuned to PirateIllustrated.com for the very latest from Greenville.

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