ECU Falls to Houston 42-20
Things did not get any easier for ECU that ran into a buzzsaw when Houston came to town Saturday night. D'Eriq King passed for 209 yards and a pair of touchdowns to Courtney Lark and Keith Corbin and the Cougars blew up the Pirates 42-20 in Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium.
The game was never close and with the win, Houston improved to 5-1 overall and 2-0 in AAC play while the Pirates lost their fourth game in six tries and its third straight in conference play.
Houston jumped out to a quick 14-0 lead in the first quarter before taking a 21-3 lead into the locker room at halftime and the Cougars never looked back from there. Houston head coach Major Applewhite still was not pleased with the play of his offense overall.
“Coach Briles does an outstanding job of calling plays. Our offense does an outstanding job at staying aggressive despite getting in our own way," Applewhite said, "Whether it’s a holding penalty or jumping offsides, whatever the penalties were tonight we’re continuing to stay aggressive and stay bold and I think our players respond to that so we just need the team to do the same thing to improve and stay out of our own way next week.”
“We’re not satisfied, we’ve got a lot of room to improve.”
ECU only managed to score a field goal in the third quarter before an Emeke Egbule fumble recovery for a touchdown extended the Cougar lead to 28-6 after three quarters.
Two more Houston touchdowns on a Mulbah Car eight-yard run and a 25-yard Bryson Smith to Keith Corbin touchdown hookup put the contest out of reach before ECU freshman Holton Ahlers came on at quarterback to engineer a pair of touchdown drives in the last five 5:15 of the game.
"I thought Holton came in at the end of the game and gave us a tremendous boost. That is something that will not go unnoticed and special teams wise we played at least equal to our opponent," said Montgomery, "We've got some major, major challenges offensively that we need to address. Some of them were addressed in the ladder part of the game. We've got to have some guys make plays."
You could tell from Montgomery's words that change could come soon offensively for the Pirates under center in the form of Ahlers.
“He showed me a lot. The first thing he showed me is that he listened to me. I was coaching him from the sideline a little bit there and he just did a good job. Some leadership qualities came out right there in those last two drives. He wanted the ball in those pressure situations. I liked the way he looked.”
"Early in the game we dropped balls. The second part of the game we had guys open, but our protection broke down and in the ladder part of the game we missed throws," Montgomery said, "The only time we didn't miss throws was the last two or three drives of the game which is the only positive offensively we had throughout the night."
Montgomery was complementary in the way David Blackwell's Pirate defense got stops on a number of occasions despite the fact that the offense was unable to capitalize.
"Really tough football game to lose in the manner in which we lost it in. If you look at the scoreboard it makes it look like our defense didn't play well. I thought our defense played really well at times throughout the game. We gave up some big plays but we played well enough in my opinion to win on defense," Montgomery said.
"We forced them into punting the ball ten times in that game. They were four of fourteen on third down conversions - all the things that we wanted to get accomplished, having them run less plays than we ran and us having more time of possession, I think it just came down to complete offensive inefficiency in some different situations," said Montgomery, "We were nine of 21 on third down which means we had to make up for some non-first down plays. We were really, really poor on first down offensively."
Linebacker Nate Harvey led ECU on defense with seven tackles, six of which were unassisted to go along one sack. Tank Robinson added six stops from his free safety position.
"We've just to get ready and come back, focus up and make sure everybody is doing their job," Robinson told PirateIllustrated.com after the game, "It was a tough loss but we're going to get prepared to come back next week.
"Defense as a whole, we've got to step it up. We allowed 35 points out there. That isn't us. We've got to step it up next week against UCF," said Harvey who broke down for PI some of the things he saw that helped Houston most, "They brought number 1(Bryson Smith) in and basically switched it up at quarterback."
ECU out gained Houston 415 to 405. Some of that came in garbage time at the end where Holton Ahlers continues to improve at quarterback. The Pirates threw for 374 yards all told, but only ran for net of 41 yards. Ahlers ran for 45 yards on just five carries but the sacks throughout the game and negative yardage runs made up the difference.
Houston got 157 yards from their ground game led by 71 yards from running back Patrick Carr and 80 more from a combination of three others.
"We didn't make enough plays. We didn't execute well enough early. Two or three plays could have kept us in the game early, but we didn't make those plays," said quarterback Reid Herring who went 26 of 42 for 229 yards with a pair of interceptions, "It definitely gives you momentum when you score early and we failed to do that. I think that hurt us kind of in the long run."
All AAC defensive lineman Ed Oliver made it difficult to get anything cooking up the middle of the Houston defense with six tackles and two sacks. Cornerbacks Isaiah Johnson and Alexander Myres delivered ten tackles and seven respectively to go along with nine stops from linebacker Austin Robinson and seven more from linebacker Roman Brown.
The Pirates return home next Saturday night to take on top ten UCF in Dowdy Ficklen Stadium.
Catch PI Postgame audio from Scottie Montgomery along with quarterbacks Kingsley Ifedi, Reid Herring, wide receiver Trevon Brown, linebacker Nate Harvey and free safety Tank Robinson.
PI AUDIO: SCOTTIE MONTGOMERY HOUSTON POST GAME PRESS CONFERENCE
