East Carolina University’s football team has landed another transfer during this highly successful recruiting period. Ryan Jones, an inside linebacker at Oklahoma, announced on Twitter Friday his commitment to play for Mike Houston and the Pirates.
Jones, who was a four-star recruit out of Mallard Creek High School in Charlotte, North Carolina in 2017, is a graduate transfer and is expected to have two years of eligibility remaining, according to Stephen Igoe of 247Sports.com.
Jones committed to Oklahoma in January of 2017 and played two seasons for the Sooners. Over that pair of seasons, the 6’2″ Jones saw the field 18 times, racking up 29 total tackles, 21 of which were solo and 2.5 tackles for loss from his linebacker position.
At ECU, however, Jones is slated to jump to the offensive side of the football and play tight end and possibly slot wide receiver, according to Igoe. Jones played both wide receiver and safety in high school before making the switch to defense full-time with Oklahoma.
As a prospect, Jones was ranked as the sixth-best athlete in the state of North Carolina for the 2017 recruiting cycle, according to 247Sports.com.
At the tight end position, the Pirate already have Zech Byrd and Jeremy Lewis on the roster, while Shane Calhoun is a three-star prospect from Florida that will add depth to the position group as a freshman.
Jones joins a slew of other transfers from five Power 5 conference to commit to ECU. Running back Chase Hayden from Arkansas, offensive guard Avery Jones from UNC and defensive back Nigel Knott from Alabama are some other players from big-name schools that have found their way to Greenville, North Carolina this off-season.
Ryan Stubblefield is a big play waiting to happen. A dual-threat quarterback in every sense of the word, Stubblefield has a cannon for a right arm paired with the ability to evade would-be tacklers with his legs.
In two seasons with Foster high school in Richmond, Texas, Stubblefield ripped up the competition, amassing 6,390 total yards between the ground and air. During his junior campaign, Stubblefield completed better than 56% of his passes for 2,755 yards through the air and 29 touchdowns.
Stubblefield’s senior year is when he forced schools and recruiters to take full notice of his skills on the football field. Just about every number improved for the dual-threat quarterback in his final prep season as he completed nearly 61% of his passes for north of 3,100 yards.
His 36 touchdowns equate to almost three per game while Stubblefield racked up 245 yards through the air, on average, every contest.
Three times during his senior campaign Stubblefield eclipsed the 300-yard plateau, including a 370-yard effort and five touchdowns against Magnolia West on Sept. 14.
On the ground, Stubblefield rushed for 376 yards and six touchdowns during his senior season, including a 79-yard performance with two touchdowns against Texas City High School and a pair of 62-yard games on the ground earlier that same season.
According to 247Sports’ prospect ratings, Stubblefield is a fringe three-star recruit. While the Pirates are largely set at quarterback with Holton Ahlers, Bryan Gagg and newcomer Mason Garcia already in the fold, Stubblefield provides Mike Houston with the option of mixing things with different formations and possibly even a wildcat situation or two.
What’s more is given Stubblefield’s success running the football, the Pirates could transition him into a full-time running back, but that would mean giving up on his powerful and accurate right arm.
For the time being, Stubblefield probably gets redshirted his freshman year in purple and gold, but his big arm could play him into meaningful reps once Ahlers’ time on campus is complete.
For student-athletes, their coaches, whether it be in high school or collegiately, can often impact their lives as much as their mother or father. Pat Dye, a member of the East Carolina University and College Football Hall of Fame who passed away on Monday, had that level of impact on Ruffin McNeill during his time at ECU in the late-1970s.
“Coach Dye was, next to my dad, the man that most influenced what my life and my coaching profession pursuit became,” McNeill said. “He was not just a great coach and mentor, but a great man.”
McNeill played four years under Dye as a defensive back and saw first-hand the type of success the former Alabama linebacker coach brought to Greenville, North Carolina. During McNeill’s freshman year, the Pirates won the Southern Conference Championship with a nine-win campaign. Just two years later, ECU won the Independence Bowl.
All told, the Pirates won 48 games under Dye, making him the fourth-most winningest ECU football coach in program history. To accomplish that, McNeill said Dye was second to none in motivating his players and giving them a reason to step foot on the field.
“Coach Dye did a great job motivating us on playing for one another,” McNeill said. “Playing for your family, playing for your mother and father and your entire family and representing East Carolina, but also representing your teammates. That’s what his biggest motivation, in my memories of coach Dye, was. It worked for my entire four years.”
On the practice field, McNeill remembers Dye taking no shortcuts and pushing every single one of his players to be the best they could be and then some. Through tough love, Dye forged physical, hard-nosed football teams that won at least seven games in each of the six seasons under his direction.
“He would push you to the point where you had to find out about yourself and take it to a place you couldn’t go to by yourself,” McNeill said. “Besides that, he did it with love because you knew he cared about you. He cared about not just you but your mom and dad and your entire family and that was throughout the whole team.
“You can tell how well a group of players respect their coach by how hard they play. I think if you ask anyone from that era, when they played any team that was associated with coach Dye, it was one of the hardest teams that they had to face and one of the most physical teams.”
Twelve years after graduating from ECU, McNeill returned to coach the defensive line under Steve Logan and eventually was tabbed as the Pirates’ head coach in 2010. In between that, and after McNeill left the Pirates in 2015, he held various positions with programs around the country.
No matter where he went, however, he always took with him pieces of what Dye instilled in him as a player.
“I took what coach Dye taught me personally to each of my coaching stops…When I was able to go back and be the head coach at East Carolina, it wasn’t hard for me motivating our team or understanding what the motivation was,” McNeill said.
That job of motivating young men to fulfill their potential was made easy for McNeill because after listening to Dye for four years, he knew his ‘why’ and he knew the ‘why’ of every person who stepped on the football field as a player under him.
For McNeill, much like it did for Dye all those years ago, that translated into success. In six years under McNeill, the Pirates went 42-34 and made four bowl games, winning one of them in 2013. ECU’s 10-win season that same year stands as the second-most in school history while McNeill ranks right behind Dye for most wins in program history.
Dye’s formula for success landed him in the College Football Hall of Fame in 2005 and the ECU Hall of Fame in 2006. For those that played under him though, including McNeill, his impact went much deeper than just wins and losses.
“He’s (Dye) one of the greatest football coaches, one of the greatest men that I can attest for,” McNeill said. “One of the greatest coaches, one of the greatest men that have held the helm of head coach at East Carolina. He did it year in and year out, day in and day out, and players that played for coach Dye from ‘75-’79 still feel the same way about him. That’s the legacy. The wins were there, that speaks for itself, but he impacted a lot of young men that played for him. I happen to be one of them.”
East Carolina University’s men’s basketball team will play Liberty in the first-ever Basketball Hall of Fame Shootout on Nov. 13 at the Spectrum Center in Charlotte, according to a release by the team on Wednesday.
“We are extremely excited to have the opportunity to compete in the Hall of Fame Shootout, ECU head basketball coach Joe Dooley said in the release. “Coach (Ritchie) MacKay has done a terrific job with his program at Liberty and they will provide us a strong early season challenge. Charlotte is one of our largest alumni bases and we’re hoping to see a lot of purple in the seats at the Spectrum Center in November.”
ECU versus Liberty is one of three games to be played in the shootout. Virginia versus Temple and Davidson versus Virginia Tech make up the other two contests.
— ECU Men’s Basketball (@ecubasketball) June 3, 2020
The Pirates have faced Liberty in hoops a total of eight times dating back to the 1988-89 campaign and own a 5-3 record over the Flame. The last match up between the two programs came on Nov. 16 of last year when Liberty downed the Pirates 77-57 inside Minges Coliseum in Greenville, North Carolina.
“We’re very excited to be launching a new collegiate event in North Carolina, a state know for its tremendous basketball history,” John L. Doleva, President and CEO of the Basketball Hall of Fame, said in the release. “Spectrum Center is a fantastic NBA venue in a terrific basketball community, and we’re excited to provide this unique opportunity to six collegiate teams and their fans this fall.”
The release said game times and ticket information will be provided at a later date and any potential updates to the event regarding COVID-19 concerns will be passed along accordingly.
Pat Dye, a legendary football coach and even better person to those that knew him best, passed away on Monday at the age of 80. While Dye is perhaps best known for his time at Auburn and four Southeastern Conference Championships, he will forever be regarded in eastern North Carolina as one of the most influential coaches to ever pull-on purple and gold.
“There were, of course, a lot of players during that era from ‘74-’79 that played under him and I don’t know of anyone that wasn’t touched by him in some way,” former ECU quarterback Jimmy Southerland told Patrick Johnson on 94.3 The Game on Tuesday. “All of it positive, I’ve never heard anybody say anything but positive things. He certainly made an impact on my life and, of course, the loss of him yesterday (Monday) throws a void in that. So we’re really sad for his family and we were a part of his family as well.”
In his stint as Pirates head coach in the mid- to late-70s, Dye quickly earned a reputation for being a tough-minded coach who wanted nothing but the best from his players day in and day out.
Making the transition from linebacker coach at Alabama under Bear Bryant to his first head coaching job with the Pirates, Dye brought with him a certain expectation of success.
“When coach Dye came in, I mean he had high expectations,” Southerland said. “With him, he was the type of person coming from Alabama under Bear Bryant, we knew he was special. My freshman year in 1974, when he walked in the room and there’s about 75 of us, you could hear a pin drop. We knew this guy was somebody extremely special and we knew he was somebody that was going to go on to great things.”
A 7-4 team in 1974, the Pirates never fell below that seven-win mark under Dye’s direction. In just his third year on the job, Dye’s Pirates won the Southern Conference Championship behind a strong nine-win campaign.
ECU would go on to win the Independence Bowl against Louisiana Tech in 1978 as a Division 1-A team after an 8-3 season.
— East Carolina Pirates (@ECUAthletics) June 1, 2020
“Coach Dye, when he rolled in the door in ‘74 and started things in a motion, he was like a train and we were all very blessed and fortunate to be on it, all the guys that I played with,” Southerland said. “Very special time and coach Dye was a very special man and very, very happy and proud to be a part of that.”
That train saw the Pirates compile a 48-18-1 record under Dye in six years, giving him the highest winning percentage of any ECU head football coach to helm at least 20 games, and the fourth-most wins in program history.
Two of those victories came against ACC competition in back-to-back weeks in 1977, wins that, according to Southerland, perfectly showcased a Dye-led team.
“When we beat them (NC State), we had seven walk-ons that were the captains of that game…I was fortunate enough to score the go-ahead touchdown with about five minutes left,” Southerland said. “Then the next week when we beat Duke, I was fortunate enough to score the 23-yard touchdown that gave us the lead in that.
“Both games though, our defense had to step-up and stop them on the one-yard line in consecutive weeks. That’s how tough and physical our defense was. They made the stop on the one-yard line against State and Duke in back-to-back weeks for us to pull out the wins. It just was the attitude that we were coached by that made us that tough and that belief in ourselves.”
One of the best motivators in college football during his time, and perhaps ever, Dye had a knack for getting his football teams ready to play on a given week, according to Southerland.
“Every game, and this is four years that I listened to these talks before the game…and he’d be talking and it would be the same thing said, but he would change the order of it,” Southerland said. “It was always being courteous to the officials, it was always show class in everything you do…He said so many neat things — I don’t know if it was from Bear Bryant or I don’t know if coach Dye came up with those sayings. It didn’t matter because by the time he got us leaving that breakfast area, every one of us were ready to play right then.”
A big recruiter of the Greenville and surrounding areas during his time with the Pirates, Dye often would piece together teams full of players that might have been overlooked by other programs in the state. At ECU, he taught those players to play with a chip on their shoulder and with a certain confidence that allowed them to be largely successful against in-state rivals in the 1970s.
Dye moved on to take the head coaching position at Wyoming after the 1979 season and ended up winning 99 games at Auburn in a career that spanned more than a decade.
He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2005 and the ECU Hall of Fame a year later in 2006.
“Coach Dye is going to tell you what he thinks, he’s going to be honest, there’s not going to be any lip service,” Southerland said. “He’s going to be up-front and honest and tell you what he thinks and how he feels. I respected that. The fact that he hung in there with me, for example, and so many other guys that were maybe on the edge of whether or not they were even going to play, but having faith that we’re going to get better.”
For those that played under him and those that have played at ECU since, Dye is often credited with establishing the Pirates as a program to be reckoned with in the state of North Carolina. Dye oversaw the Pirates’ transition from an independent to a Division 1-A school in the late-1970s and he helped lay the groundwork for the great rivalries that exist between ECU and in-state ACC competition.
“To me, he set the tone for the Pirates of the future with the chip on the shoulder, with a swagger, with us kind of being the renegades and we loved it,” Southerland said. “We loved having that attitude about us — the ACC especially. We had a good time beating up on those guys. It was very special. He called us skinny-legged boys and all that kind of stuff. We got that reputation and we ran with it and we loved it and we had a lot of success.”
Listen to Jimmy Southerland’s full interview with Patrick Johnson on 94.3 The Game that first aired on Tuesday below:
Rahjai Harris could be the second iteration of Darius Pinnix Jr. The physicality of Pinnix, which has been on display at East Carolina University for the last handful of seasons, can also be seen in Harris’ high school highlight reel.
Listed anywhere from 5’10” to 6-feet tall, Harris is a stocky, powerful runner at 205 pounds. Time and time again, he can be seen barreling over would-be tacklers for extra yardage after a hit. In open space, it takes more than an arm tackle to bring Harris to the ground, especially when he is running at top speed.
Coming out of Byrnes high school, Harris was tabbed as the 17th-best prospect in the state of South Carolina by Rivals.com and 25th by 247Sports.com. In all four years at that prep level, Harris was a member of the varsity squad and picked up at least 650 yards on the ground each campaign.
As a sophomore, Harris logged 759 yards and averaged six yards per rush attempt while finding the endzone 11 times. While he regressed slightly as a junior, Harris still eclipsed 100-plus yard performances three times and an additional six times as a senior.
One of those 100-yard games came against Gaffney on Sept. 27 when he rushed 32 times for 300 yards and four touchdowns. That yardage mark stands as his career-best.
After rushing for 1,445 yards (131.4 yards per game) and 21 touchdowns to cap his prep career in 2019, Harris helped South Carolina win the Shrine Bowl with a 99-yard effort on the ground and a score.
For his high school career, Harris topped the 3,500-yard plateau and averaged a healthy 6.9 yards per carry while posting 46 touchdowns in 44 total games.
One half of ECU’s prep running back class for this recruiting cycle, Harris was an early enrollee to the university and was set to participate in spring practice. Unfortunately, those, along with the annual spring game, were canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Nevertheless, Harris could be a candidate to redshirt in his freshman year as Pinnix, Demetrius Mauney, Trace Christian and new-comer Chase Hayden all figure to be ahead of him on the depth chart.
Still, with Harris’ skill set, he could see time on the field as a freshman. With time, we could see him regularly running over American Athletic Conference competition inside Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium.
East Carolina University freshman left-handed pitcher C.J. Mayhue has been named to the Collegiate Baseball Freshman All-America Team, according to a release by the team on Tuesday.
On pace to break ECU’s freshman ERA record before the COVID-19 pandemic forced the cancellation of the remainder of the baseball season, Mayhue had allowed just one earned run across 16 innings pitched. That equates to a 0.56 ERA, a mark that would have bested Joe Ingle’s 1.14 ERA in 2015 for lowest by a Pirate freshman had Mayhue racked up at least 30 innings and maintained that sparkling number.
In just eight appearances, Mayhue struck out 19 batters, walking just six and holding opposing hitters to a .203 batting average against. Seven of those eight outings saw the southpaw record more than three outs, as he tossed a career-high 3.1 innings of relief against Ole Miss on Feb. 29. On 47 pitches that evening, Mayhue struck out six batters and walked none, setting a career best for single game punch-outs.
In his final appearance of the shortened 2020 season, Mayhue allowed his lone earned run of the campaign, a solo home run against UNCW in a 5-2 Pirate loss.
Nevertheless, with his selection to the All-America team, Mayhue becomes the 17th Freshman All-American in program history, according to the release, and the fifth since head coach Cliff Godwin took over as skipper.
East Carolina University offensive lineman Fernando Frye was named a recipient of the 2020 University Scholar-Athlete Award by The National Football Foundation’s Bill Dooley Chapter on Monday, according to a release by the team.
Frye was granted a sixth and final year of eligibility by the NCAA in January and will serve as an important member of ECU football’s offensive line as a graduate student in 2020.
In two years with the Pirates, the 6’3″, 289-pound Frye has appeared in 20 games, including all 12 in 2019. After Cortez Herrin went down with an injury against William & Mary last season, Frye stepped into the starting left guard spot and played well down the stretch.
According to the release, Frye found himself on the academic Honor Roll and Dean’s List last year and graduated ECU in December of 2019 with a 3.72 GPA and a degree in criminal justice.
Alex Turner was the most recent ECU recipient of the award in 2019. Other past winners include Warren Harvey in 2015, J.T. Boyd in 2016, Worth Gregory in 2017 and Austin Teague in 2018.
Trenton Gill from NC State, Quentin Harris from Duke, Nick Polino from UNC and Isaiah Totten from NC Central were the other winners of the award from the Bill Dooley Chapter.
Watch tape on Keaton Mitchell and one of the first things that jump off the page will be his speed. Timed as running the 40-yard dash in the 4.3s, Mitchell used his sheer athletic ability to post some of the best numbers by a running back in Georgia prep history.
A state that has produced the likes of Herschel Walker, and later, Nick Chubb at the running back position, Mitchell did his best to leave a mark on the Georgia record books while at Eagle’s Landing.
With his 118 career rushing touchdowns, Mitchell finished his prep career second all-time in the state behind Washaun Ealey’s 133 scores from 2006 to 2009. Mitchell’s 49 touchdowns in the 2018 season alone also rank second all-time in Georgia for most in a single season by a running back, again behind Ealey who found the endzone 58 times in 2007.
As a junior, Mitchell posted his best season in terms of counting statistics. On 213 rush attempts, he racked up over 2,500 yards, finding the endzone 49 times, the most ever by an underclassman in the state of Georgia. As one could deduce from his numbers, Mitchell flashed his big play ability time and time again in his final two years at the prep level.
In 28 combined games between his junior and senior campaigns, Mitchell posted 100-plus yard contests 23 times, averaging better than 150 yards per outing during that stretch.
With seven touchdowns against Landmark Christian during the 2018 season, Mitchell placed himself on the short list of Georgia running backs to score at least that many times in a single game. Surprisingly enough, Mitchell’s biggest game in terms of yardage did not come in that contest, but rather four games later against Wesleyan when he torched the opposing defense for 311 yards and four touchdowns on 16 carries.
To complement his speed, and perhaps because of it, Mitchell has a knack for making linebackers and defensive backs miss in space. Quick cuts, juke and spin moves are all in Mitchell’s back pocket for him to break out whenever he deems necessary.
Ranked as the 17th-best running back in the state of Georgia by Max Preps and 225th nationally, Mitchell could be a freshman that makes an immediate impact for the Pirates in 2020.
Save for a couple games in 2019, the East Carolina University football team largely struggled to run the football. With an average of 141.3 yards per game, the Pirates ranked 91st in rushing offense in the NCAA and only punched the football into the endzone 12 times on the ground while averaging less than four yards per carry.
Heading into the season, the Pirates had their bell-cow running back in junior Darius Pinnix Jr. as he beat out Hussein Howe and others in the preseason for the right to line up in the backfield against NC State in Week 1. The early returns on Pinnix were promising as the big, physical back racked up 134 yards on 21 attempts with two touchdowns against Gardner-Webb University a week later.
Those results, however, were quickly extinguished as Pinnix ended up missing the vast majority of 2019 with an injury. With Pinnix sidelined, the Pirates were forced to turn to underclassmen in Demetrius Mauney, Trace Christian and Tay Williams to pick up the carries.
“Last year, we come through the spring and Pinnix had really established himself as probably the guy that maybe we could build it around with a really good spring practice, and then a really good camp coming through that at the start of the year,” ECU’s Offensive Coordinator/Quarterbacks coach Donnie Kirkpatrick told Patrick Johnson on 94.3 The Game on Friday.
“Then when he got injured and we didn’t get him back to the last couple of weeks, we were really searching for: who’s the guy. What happened is one guy would step up one week and then the next week it’d be somebody else and it was kind of a revolving door.”
Mauney, who was a true freshman last year, found himself at the front of that revolving door frequently. Four times in 2019 Mauney topped 50 yards on the ground, including a 107-yard game against Gardner-Webb. He also chipped in 74 yards on 21 attempts against the University of Central Florida, scoring his first career collegiate touchdown in the process.
“Demetrius Mauney was a true freshman that I think did an outstanding job of playing hard, learning the system quickly,” Kirkpatrick said. “But I think it was probably a little bit more than he thought even he was going to be doing in his freshman year.”
While the Pirates received solid efforts by both Christain and Williams in relief of Mauney, both Howe and Williams have since entered the transfer portal and will not be a part of ECU’s program moving forward. Before December’s recruiting period bolstered the running back position for Mike Houston’s Pirates, they only had four running backs on the roster in Mauney, Pinnix, Christian and redshirt freshman Asa Barnes.
Sensing running backs coach De’Rail Sims needed some extra depth in the position room, the Pirates went out and signed two during the early signing period and added another via the transfer portal in Chase Hayden.
“The addition of some older guys to come in and bridge that gap a little bit,” Kirkpatrick said. “I think we’ve signed some really, really good incoming guys. One was able to come mid-semester, one was not, but then we lost the spring practice with him. We were really concerned if we just had enough fire-power at that position and so that’s why we investigated the portal a little bit.”
Hayden, a graduate transfer from Arkansas, will bring much-needed experience and depth to a position group that struggled to post consistent numbers in the absence of Pinnix in 2019.
In two years of on-field production for the Razorbacks, Hayden racked up 500 rushing yards and found the endone four times. Despite only 105 collegiate carries, the 5’10”, 205-pound back averaged 4.76 yards per carry, including a 5.5 clip in 2018.
Rahjai Harris is the mid-semester enrollee Kirkpatrick mentioned above and was touted as one of the best running backs to come out of South Carolina this recruiting cycle. In four varsity seasons, Harris posted over 3,500 yards on the ground, scoring 46 touchdowns in 44 games.
The 6’0” back ended his prep career by averaging 131.4 yards per game across 11 contests, scoring the ball 21 times.
Keaton Mitchell, who offers a completely different skill set with his 5’9”, 170-pound frame, was a top-20 running back out of the state of Georgia, and for good reason. In each of his final two high school seasons, Mitchell topped 2,000 rushing yards and 40 touchdowns. As a junior, Mitchell averaged 11.8 yards per carry, ending his prep career averaging a 10.6 clip and 115.4 yards per contest.
“The one thing I’ve learned over the years is, you can never have too many good players,” Kirkpatrick said. “The season is long, it’s physical, especially for a running back. They take so much punishment. They got the ball and everybody — the attention is on them defensively, so they’re taking so many hits. I don’t think we’ll ever be too deep there.”
With two of the highest rated running backs in South Carolina and Georgia on its roster and a SEC transfer in Hayden, ECU has turned a weakness into what should be a strength for the upcoming season.
Hayden, Pinnix and Mauney all figure to compete for the starting job whenever preseason workouts begin. While the Pirates will no doubt redshirt one, if not more, of their running backs, both Harris and Mitchell could make a real impact for a team that needs all the game-changing talent it can get.
“I’m excited about the running back position,” Kirkpatrick said. “Coach Sims, it’ll be a lot of his job to get that organized and have a good competitive room in there that will also pull for each other but will be competitive enough that they’ll have to work hard, play hard and earn those reps and touches with the football.”
Listen to Donnie Kirkpatrick’s full comments about the Pirates’ run game to Patrick Johnson that first aired on 94.3 The Game on Friday below:
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