Pirates rally in 4th, become bowl eligible

By Allen Etzler
Published in Sports on October 24, 2014 1:46 PM

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GREENVILLE -- Justin Hardy arrived at East Carolina as an under-recruited walk-on freshman with low expectations and a lot to prove.

Four years later, he's proved every team that didn't recruit him that they were wrong.

Hardy caught 14 passes for 186 yards and a touchdown, moving him up to second in the FBS rankings with 327 career receptions during ECU's 31-21 win over American Athletic Conference foe UConn on Thursday night.

"You have to have some kind of mentality that you know you were overlooked coming into college," Hardy said of how he approaches the game. "You have to know your 'why.' That's one of the things I like to say, know why you do the things you do."

Hardy knows exactly why he does the things he does: He wants to win.

And for a while the Huskies made a Pirates' win look bleak. The game had all the makings of an upset -- over 100 yards in penalties, a missed field goal and an interception in the end zone to name a few ingredients.

But spurned on by senior leadership, the Pirates (6-1 overall, 2-0 AAC) looked within one another and dug deep to pull out a win many people thought might come a little easier.

"There's no such thing as an ugly win," ECU coach Ruffin McNeill said. "Write that. There's no such thing as that. Wins are hard. I cherish all wins."

Shane Carden joined Hardy with a big-time performance when his team needed it most by throwing for a season-high 445 yards and two touchdowns on 38 of 64 passing against the AAC's best-ranked defense.

Breon Allen, another senior, found the end zone twice despite being bottled up for a large portion of the game. Allen did punch in the touchdown that sealed the game from nine yards out with just under a minute and a half remaining.

"I used three words to describe this team," McNeill said. "Brave. Courageous. Lionheart. A lot of teams would have gotten frustrated and lost that game. We've talked about playing for the man next to us and staying with them. I thought they did a good job."

McNeill wasn't as pleased when his Pirates went into halftime up 14-7. Carden didn't attribute the frustration to the way the team was playing, but rather they way they were acting.

"It was nothing about how we were playing it was that we were talking too much with the other team," Carden said. "We were getting into it, we were worrying too much about the penalties that's what he was most upset about."

The Pirates had 11 penalties for 105 yards, making it the third time this season ECU has over 100 yards in penalties.

Despite the scoring woes for the offense, the Pirates defense kept a scrappy Huskies team at bay and allowed just 84 yards rushing. They forced the Huskies to throw for much of the game, and despite some success, UConn didn't have enough firepower to finish the job.

Cornerback Josh Hawkins, who gave up an 88-yard touchdown to Deshon Foxx in the third quarter in which he was beat off the line of scrimmage and then tripped and fell, did say the secondary struggled and needed to play better.

"We've definitely played better," Hawkins said. "Me personally I'm not satisfied with what we did. The d-line and linebackers did a great job stopping the run ... And actually I'm not satisfied with what I did. I can't be giving up no deep balls like that."

But as McNeill said, it doesn't matter if the Pirates in style or not.

"We just want to win by one and get up out of there," McNeill said.