ECU Basketball: Is There Any Hope?

East Carolina fans care about football. With the season about here, I don't think there is any question about that. During the fall, Pirate fans wear the purple with pride, win or lose.

Basketball is a different story, though. Here in the heart of basketball country, the ECU basketball pulse is barely beating. Except for a rare blip, it always has been that way — and unless there's a miraculous turnaround that we can't yet see, it always will be. Many a student at ECU would rather watch Carolina, State or Duke on television than go to a Pirates home game. That is apathy.

And for an old basketball guy like athletic director Terry Holland, that has to itch like a bad case of poison ivy on a hot summer afternoon. He yearns to change a program that has been running for years in quick sand.

Holland was a good basketball player at Davidson way back when. He once led the nation in field goal percentage, and he had coaching success at Davidson and at Virginia, where he took the Cavaliers to two Final Fours and won the school’s only ACC Tournament Championship.

But trying to make East Carolina basketball relevant is a challenge akin to attempting to win the Indianapolis 500 on a motorcycle.

The Pirates history is just terrible. Not a winning season since 1997 and just 10 total since 1971. ECU also goes through basketball coaches like Sherman marched through Georgia.

Earlier this week, Ricky Stokes, who played for Holland at Virginia, stepped down after just two seasons and a horrible 14-44 record. Stokes was Holland's guy, and that's why he still has a job as associate athletic director for basketball operations. He was also no fool, obviously looking into a future filled with more murky gloom than bright sunshine. Changes like this in a program just don't happen in August. This reeks of desperation or Holland trying to help his former pupil save face.

In steps Mack McCarthy, promoted to acting head coach from his role as associate head coach. McCarthy has a better resume than Stokes — 16 years as a head coach at Chattanooga and Virginia Commonwealth, with a credible 309-177 record. He's probably a better coach than Stokes.

But he's the Pirates 10th head coach since Tom Quinn left after the 1974 season, and only Joe Dooley (57-52) from 1995-1999 was able to have an overall winning record.

And McCarthy is on the short string. “Acting head coach” doesn't give that snug feel of security does it?

"I think we've all said that we know that we've got to show considerable progress this year," Holland said. "We don't want a referendum on Coach McCarthy. That will be decided with the information in at the end of the year, and we'll be either negotiating a nice big contract for Coach McCarthy or we'll be looking for a new coach, I think it's that simple."

Holland is a 65-year-old competitor, a former basketball coach who would dearly love to see East Carolina succeed in the sport he knows best and loves. He also knows that at his age, it needs to happen now. To turn ECU basketball around could be his legacy. But the odds of that happening are long.

Football at ECU is king. Baseball is the crown prince.

Basketball is the languid loser that no one seems to care about.