GREENVILLE -- East Carolina will try to capture its fifth-straight victory
over an Atlantic Coast Conference opponent when it hosts Virginia Tech for a
non-league matchup Saturday at Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium. The Pirates, who are in
the midst of a schedule that includes four road games in five weeks, have
knocked off North Carolina twice, NC State and Virginia Tech once each during
its current run of success against the ACC. The contest will also mark a brief
break from American Conference play for ECU, which next week will visit SMU for
the first time since 2009.
Virginia Tech leads 13-6 ... After the Hokies opened the
series with a 37-2 win in 1956, the two programs observed a 31-year hiatus
before meeting on an annual basis for eight seasons beginning in 1987 ... After
ECU won four of the first seven matchups, Virginia Tech rolled off six straight before the Pirates snapped the
streak by upsetting the Hokies 27-22 in Charlotte in 2008 ... Virginia Tech has
won six of eight in Greenville and seven of 10 in Blacksburg ... The Pirates
haven’t defeated the Hokies at Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium since 1992.
It’s been a tale of two halves when examining ECU’s last
four games vs. Virginia Tech (‘10, ‘11, ‘13, ‘14) - the Pirates have scored a
combined 59 points (14.8), thrown for 684 yards (171.0) and had only one
interception in first half action against the Hokies, but have scored just 16
points (4.0), rushed for nine yards (2.3), passed for 279 yards (69.8) and
tossed five picks after intermission in those four contests ... Additionally,
ECU has held Virginia Tech to a combined 144 (72 ypg) ground yards in its last
two matchups - 53 in 2013, 91 in 2014 - after surrendering 241 during the 2011
tilt alone.
Ruffin McNeill (East Carolina ‘80) is 38-29 (.567) in his
sixth season at East Carolina, while overall, he is 39-29 (.574) as a
collegiate head coach after guiding Texas Tech to a 41-31 victory over Michigan
State in the Valero Alamo Bowl Jan. 2, 2010 on an interim basis. When he became
ECU’s 20th all-time head football coach 19 days later, McNeill officially finished
a 10-year stint on the Red Raider staff. The 2015 campaign marks McNeill’s 30th
year at the collegiate level, which includes an earlier stop at East Carolina
as the Pirates’ defensive line coach in 1992. In all, he has served on the
staff s with eight different programs and spent a combined nine years in defensive
coordinator roles at Appalachian State (1993-96), Nevada-Las Vegas (1997-98)
and Texas Tech (2007-09). McNeill starred as a four-year letterman at ECU under
Pat Dye from 1976-1979 and helped lead the Pirates to their first bowl
appearance in the modern era when East Carolina defeated Louisiana Tech in the
‘78 Independence Bowl.
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