GREENVILLE, N.C. — East Carolina didn’t need any final-moment heroics to seal its latest upset. This time, coach Skip Holtz’s plucky Pirates all but had No. 8 West Virginia put away by halftime.
Jonathan Williams had two short touchdown runs, quarterback Patrick Pinkney was nearly perfect and East Carolina routed the Mountaineers 24-3 on Saturday for its third straight win over a ranked team.
“It feels like we won a championship today,” defensive end C.J. Wilson said.
Pinkney was 22-of-28 for 236 yards with a touchdown for East Carolina (2-0), which was coming off an upset of then-No. 17 Virginia Tech in which the Pirates returned a blocked punt for the decisive touchdown in the closing minutes.
They didn’t let West Virginia hang around nearly that long. They never trailed, kept Pat White in check, had 386 total yards to the Mountaineers’ 251 and thoroughly outplayed West Virginia from start to finish on both sides of the ball. The result was a remarkably easy upset of a top-10 team, the school’s first since Steve Logan led his Pirates past then-No. 9 Miami 27-23 on Sept. 23, 1999.
“I told them it wasn’t going to take an out-of-body experience to beat West Virginia,” Holtz said.
These Pirates followed last season’s Hawaii Bowl victory over then-No. 22 Boise State by taking care of the two toughest teams on this year’s schedule, a pair of high-profile programs that Holtz has used as measuring sticks for the East Carolina program he is in his fourth year of rebuilding.
His latest wins could propel the Pirates back into the Top 25 for the first time since ’99 while keeping them in the conversation for an at-large BCS berth — not that they’re looking that far ahead yet.
“We’ve come a long way,” Holtz said. “There was a time when we couldn’t win three in a row.”
The Mountaineers were held without a touchdown for the first time since a 45-3 loss at Miami in 2001.
