PI AUDIO: MIKE HOUSTON'S POST GAME PRESS CONFERENCE
USF made easy work of ECU in a convincing 45-20 victory Saturday night in Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium. With the win, USF evened their record at 4-4 and 2-2 in AAC play and in the process they extended their all-time series lead to 9-1 over the Pirates.
The Bulls got 129 yards rushing and two touchdowns from Jordan Cronkite in addition to 99 yards from Jah’Quez Evans who got into the act at quarterback in the first half. Evans scampered for a big 34-yard touchdown with four minutes to go in the second quarter to put USF up by three touchdowns before Cronkite’s ten yard touchdown run made it 35-7 at halftime.
Jordan McCloud was also solid for USF. He threw for 102 yards and a pair of touchdowns to Randall St. Felix and Jacob Mathis before yielding to Kirk Rygol in the second half. Rygol then went 6-12 for 74 yards including a 24-yard touchdown strike to Terrence Horne early in the fourth quarter.
“Great team win, but we got to get a lot of things cleaned up,” said USF coach Charlie Strong who didn’t mince words, “You look at our penalties, it was way too many penalties. You know it’s no reason for it and we’ve got to get it corrected because if we play a good team, we lose that game.”
The Pirates only breath of life in the game came on the first play of the game when Tyler Snead took the opening kickoff for an ECU record one hundred yards for a touchdown that gave the Pirates an early 7-0 lead.
Jake Verity kicked a couple of field goals and Bryan Gagg came in late in the game to make his collegiate debut at quarterback. His only throw of the game was good for ECU’s only touchdown pass of the day on a five-yard Jeremy Lewis reception, but by then the game was already way out of hand.
First year ECU head coach Mike Houston is fast having to adjust to losing. That is something he hasn’t done an abundance of over the course of his career. He was clearly not pleased with the performance of his ball club.
“Certainly very disappointed with the outcome of the ballgame. It’s not what we expect from ourselves. It’s not what we want to be,” said Houston, “Too many critical errors at the wrong time that put ourselves in bad situations and we didn’t take advantage of some opportunities that we had. You can’t do that if you’re going to win a football game against a good football team in this conference.”
Things are moving in the wrong direction for ECU. Turnovers and missed tackles are the most glaring issues at the moment. The offense also seemingly lacked imagination at times. That issue is magnified when the quarterback is less mobile than some to try to turn a bad play into a good one. USF had that ability Saturday night while ECU did not.
USF put together 525 yards of total offense to just 424 for ECU. The Bulls made 13 penalties to just five for the Pirates which was one bright spot for ECU, but after the game, Mike Houston gave his take on where things stand at the moment.
“When I took the job I knew things were going to be tough to turn things around and I knew there would be some ups and downs this year, but that doesn’t make it any easier. Our expectations are to get things fixed as fast as possible. None of us, players, coaches - none of us accept this. This is not who we want to be. It doesn’t take anything from South Florida, a good football team who had some guys who had some big days for them, but we expect to compete at a higher level than this.”
For the most part, USF had their way defensively when ECU moved the football into scoring position and that kept the Pirates from ever putting together much in the way of any real momentum.
“Two turnovers in the red zone. I mean if you punch those two in, the tide of the game is completely different. The one got returned for almost the distance. We had opportunities where it could have been kind of a blow for blow deal. It could have been a 21-17 game at halftime. It could have been that kind of game at the half, but you can’t make those kind of critical errors in the redzone and that’s two weeks in a row we’ve done that.”
USF got the better of it but Strong expressed disappointment that they gave up a touchdown late in the game.
“You got to stop people in the red zone,” said Strong, “You know, we gave up the two field goals, but it was no reason we gave up the touchdown there late. We had him covered and we just didn’t pull it out, but the defense did make some big stops.”
ECU had their chances to score, but turnovers negated several good opportunities to score touchdowns.
Holton Ahlers did manage to throw for 217 yards on 18-28 passing with one interception for ECU(3-5/0-4 AAC). Demetrius Mauney led the Pirate rushing attack with just 50 yards on 13 carries to go along with 30 yards from Trace Christian on nine rushing attempts.
Snead led the Pirate receiving corp with 69 yards on a team high six receptions to go along with five from C.J. Johnson for a 85 yards.
Tank Robinson, Alex Turner and Xavier Smith led ECU with seven tackles each.
ECU will look to regroup and get ready for another tough AAC contest next week when Cincinnati comes to town in a 7 o’clock game in Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium.
