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Jackets Host ECU on Friday

Josh Pastner’s Jackets to host ECU on 11/16

Fresh off a hard fought game against Tennessee, the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets will host the Eastern Carolina Pirates on Friday night. The game will be broadcast on ACCNE at 7:30pm.

So who is Eastern Carolina? Well aside from being the largest school in North Carolina and being known as the NC “party school”, they are currently making their way into the conversation as the up and coming program in the American Athletic Conference. The ECU program made a fantastic hire during the offseason, luring Florida Gulf Coast coach Joe Dooley away from Fort Myers.

Dooley spent time in the Bill Self coaching tree prior to his hiring at FGCU. He was widely known to be one of the Jayhawk’s most effective recruiters early in the Self era, credited with landing players such as Cole Aldrich, Tyshawn Taylor and Mario Chalmers. In 2013 he left Lawrence for Fort Myers for his second head coaching position, replacing Andy Enfield after he departed for USC. In five seasons at FGCU he made the NCAA tournament twice and the NIT twice. He won 21 games or more in all five seasons and never finished worse than second in the Atlantic Sun Conference. He departed the Eagles with a 114-58 record.

The interesting thing about Dooley is that he was actually the Head Coach of the Pirates before this season. He led the purple and black from 1995-1999 after Eddie Payne departed for Oregon State. During his first stint at ECU, Dooley went 57-52.

The Pirates come into the GT game with a 2-1 record, averaging 79 points per game. ECU also played Lamar early in the 2018-19 season, a game in which they needed overtime to win. ECU has an ACC flavor as Dooley brought on former Virginia Tech Assistant Coach Steve Roccaforte, who in turn brought former Hokie Seth LeDay with him. He’s also bringing former Hokies Tyrie Jackson and Khadim Sy in for the 2019 class.

LeDay has led the Pirates through the first three games, averaging 16.3 points and 6.3 rebounds per game. Freshman Jayden Gardner and sophomore K.J. Davis give Dooley a nice duo to back up LeDay, combining to score 25 points and snag better than 12 rebounds per contest early in the 2018-19 season.

The straw that stirs the drink is senior point guard Isaac Fleming. The former Hawaii Rainbow Warrior has been a fantastic addition to the Pirate program, averaging 12.2 points, 4.8 assists and 1.4 steals per game through 33 games. Fleming is solid but does not provide an outside threat, shooting less than 28% from deep over the course of his career.

Strangely enough, one of Georgia’s own is the player that concerns me. Freshman Tae Hardy, a Miller Grove product, has played well early for the Pirates. The 6’3″ guard averages 9 points, 2.7 rebounds, an assist and a steal per game early in his career. He likes to jump passing lanes and get out in the open court. He could be a huge X-factor in this game.

At the end of the day it’s hard to predict what we will see here. This is a new coach with a new program who has yet to stock the pond with his players. Dooley keeps the tempo pretty low and doesn’t historically play a ton of defense (according to KenPom).

Given the most recent performance by the Jackets against Tennessee, I can’t imagine the spread is going to be crazy. I do like the Jackets to cover in this contest if the spread is set at single digits. East Carolina is not Tennessee. I think this is the game where Jose Alvarado and Shembarri Phillips both get right.

 
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Peacone36

Peacone36

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orientalnc said:
@Peacone36 is usually spot on with his facts, so an unrelated to the game factual error did not seem worthy of comment. Since those of us who live in Eastern North Carolina sometimes misstate the full name of ECU, I let it go. Pec lives in NC, so he clearly has not driven through downtown Greenville and seen the multitude of purple and gold flags and signs that seem to be everywhere.

As for which college is the largest in NC, there should not be much debate. NC State is much larger than ECU.
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As my project manager at work often says, “don’t let the facts get in the way of a good story.”
 
slugboy

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I looked at the KenPom numbers this morning (https://kenpom.com/). I know they don't tell you a ton, and it's like watching the stock market, but if you're low that says something and if you're high that says something. We're still around the 90's (93), and ECU is around 264, which would be about a 15 point spread (not including home court, but mentioned earlier). That still says competitive game for me, and we'll have to take ECU and everyone else seriously.

I'd like to see us move more, cut to the basket more, and guard outside shots better. I'd like to see clean, crisp, fast passes--and that's the part of the game that concerns me most. Careless turnovers will burn us, but if we can keep possession, I see us doing well. We should keep an eye on Fleming and not put any passes too close to him.
 
kg01

kg01

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Only click if you're tryna give @Peacone36 the bidness over his article ....

iky.gif

kg got yer bak, peac
 
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YlJacket

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slugboy said:
I looked at the KenPom numbers this morning (https://kenpom.com/). I know they don't tell you a ton, and it's like watching the stock market, but if you're low that says something and if you're high that says something. We're still around the 90's (93), and ECU is around 264, which would be about a 15 point spread (not including home court, but mentioned earlier). That still says competitive game for me, and we'll have to take ECU and everyone else seriously.

I'd like to see us move more, cut to the basket more, and guard outside shots better. I'd like to see clean, crisp, fast passes--and that's the part of the game that concerns me most. Careless turnovers will burn us, but if we can keep possession, I see us doing well. We should keep an eye on Fleming and not put any passes too close to him.
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This is essentially it with 2 caveats. First is I want to see the same defensive intensity they played UT with. I know you commented on guarding outside shots better but I think we actually did OK on that. The second is I am not so worried about turnovers for this particular game as much as I am seeing the movement and schemes they need to add into the offense. As they learn to do that the TO numbers may well be higher than you want. In engineering terms it is called a "learning curve" ;)

Beyond that let's start establishing roles - and I am particularly focused on Devoe - whether he can be a scorer at the ACC level. And it would be nice to see them work on fouling just a bit less. And winning would be nice too.
 

lv20gt

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slugboy said:
. We're still around the 90's (93), and ECU is around 264, which would be about a 15 point spread (not including home court, but mentioned earlier). That still says competitive game for me, and we'll have to take ECU and everyone else seriously
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To put this in perspective a bit, Lamar is 255 and took ECU to OT @ECU. We should win comfortably.
 
GT_EE78

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what a difference a year makes? last year we had higher hopes that were dashed by now.
This year we had crappy hopes but added a 4star center we didnt expect for this year, don't have injuries or suspensions. no coach is currently accused of inappropriate behavior, no players are in foreign jails (like ucla). We have no remaining OOC games that are un-winnable.
Even the mediocre football team is bowl bound which makes the admin ecstatic! Lets face it, it don't get any better than this for GT fans.
So who's going to join Jose and Alston as our next double digit scorer? yes we know, haven't u seen that cold blank stare on the face of
Michael Devo , yup gonna be a baller
 

PirateCakeLady

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NoQuarterBrigade said:
I think PirateCakeLady was talking about how you referred to East Carolina as Eastern Carolina and said the colors are purple and black as opposed to purple and gold. Yes, Pirate Nation is a very passionate fan base. The university has been around for well over 100 years. It’s difficult to understand how others may refer to it as Eastern Carolina.

Overall, your review was fairly accurate about the team. It looks like you did your homework for the most part. There’s a little bit missing there though.

Anyway, I think this will be a good game. Whatever the outcome, Dooley’s young Pirates will be well prepared and ready to play this one against Georgia Tech College and the gold and black.

The Pirates are coming.
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Thank you. Yes, I was referring to the incorrect name of my university. We fought long and hard to retain/obtain the name East Carolina University. If the UNC school system had its way every state school in NC would be UNC@, but of course they would be the only one that could be called "Carolina". I hope this is a good hard fought game between these two teams. Great fun getting to share it with my niece in Houston.
 

glandon1960

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Thoughts on what I saw tonight:

- CJP is right - this team can be a very good defensive team. I don't think as good as two years ago, but much better than average.
- Banks really helps anchor the defense, plus an additional shot blocker when AD is not in (or in foul trouble)
----- Ogbonda rebounds and bangs inside, but not a lot else ... Banks will definitely get more minutes - between him and AD I think we're solid at the 5
- Cole did not dress, boot on foot - not sure if serious or not.
----- Wright started, did some good and some bad things (mainly defensive lapses) - did not stand out as really good or really bad
----- AD and Banks played some together (and some together with Wright also out there). AD has improved on the perimeter, but I don't expect to see him out there much as it does limit the offense.
- Played a lot of small ball - but that was best match up as ECU played one big and 4 guards most of the night
- CGB and Alston were aggressive tonight - driving and taking open shots
- Few too many careless turnovers, especially in transition - final stats may be deceiving as quite with bench in and game out of hand
- Offense was standing around first 8-10 minutes (like at Tennessee), but started getting A LOT of movement which created open shots which we knocked down - movement and dribble penetration is what I see as key to the offense since we really don't have players that can create good shots on their own
- Rebounding may be problem for this team - some of the guards are not blocking out well - gave up way too many offensive rebounds

Definitely better than what I saw vs. Lamar. Hard pressed to think we don't win next two at home by double digits.
Hard to judge it vs. Tennessee as ECU does not have the size/players UT does. UT defense knocked us on our heels - and we stood around a lot. I do think we played good D vs. UT and again tonight.
 
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