By By BRIAN HAINES
Sports Writer
GREENVILLE — East Carolina hoops will officially tip-off its season tonight when it hosts the University of Virginia-Wise basketball team tonight at 6 p.m. at Minges Coliseum.
If you don’t know much about the Highland Cavaliers, don’t sweat it. Pirates’ coach Mack McCarthy is in the same boat.
“I don’t know anything about them other than the fact that they are 2-0 and are expected to be 3-0 when they come in here,” McCarthy said after practice on Monday. “I don’t know an awful lot about their personnel, the level of their talent or anything else. Coach (Larry) Epperly does the scheduling and this was a good game. He had a connection over there, we needed somebody to play on Friday the 13th and they were available.”
It’s hard to tell what’s more shocking: the fact that the Conference USA Pirates are expecting to draw a crowd with a home opener against the University of Virginia-Wise, which hails from the NAIA, or that ECU needed a connection to get the game.
At the very least it will be a good chance for East Carolina to work on some things before it heads into the Greensboro Coliseum on Sunday to take on Wake Forest at 2 p.m.
According to McCarthy, the Pirates will need all the extra practice they can get. ECU’s third-year head coach said his team is still not ready for the season to start.
When asked if he was saying that as more of a coaching cliche or if he really meant it, the candid McCarthy said, “Probably both.”
He continued, “This team isn’t ready because we are so young. We do have quite a bit of returnees, but we are playing a lot differently than we have in the past where we really relied on the three-point shot. The offense is new, the defense is new, even though it is based on the same principles of a year ago. It’s a dramatically different group to get ready to play.
“The second part of that is that no coach ever really feels like they got every thing in. We have press offenses that we haven’t touched, we have zone offenses that we haven’t touched. There are defensive situations that haven’t come up yet because we have just been at practice and a couple of scrimmages. … We are no different from every other team in that regard.”
The Highland Cavaliers enter tonight’s game with a 2-1 record after falling 83-81 in overtime to Pikeville on Wednesday.
The Cavs are led by a pair of 6-2 guards in junior Adam Hood, who is averaging 24 points per game, along with Pance Kecev, who is posting 21 points per game.
Wise has no players taller than 6-6 on its roster and its leading rebounders are Kevin Perry (9.5 rpg) and Josh Jordan (7 rpg).