By By BRIAN HAINES, Brian@wdnweb.com, Sports Writer
GREENVILLE — After the Pirates fiery, come-from-behind 54-42 win over the Blazers on Thursday, East Carolina heads into its matchup with Rice with a few extra days to rest and recover.
The person in need of the most healing time is junior quarterback Dominique Davis, who sustained an injury to his left (non-throwing) shoulder during the win over UAB.
Davis hurt his shoulder in the third quarter and was forced to the sideline, but came back to lead ECU past the Blazers as the Pirates out-scored them 27-7 in the fourth quarter.
The junior signal-caller completed 26 of his 41 attempts for 331 yards, five touchdowns and no interceptions.
Davis has thrown 10 TD passes in the last two games and leads the country in points responsible for with 23 per contest. The Pirates’ QB also leads all of the FBS with 31 TD tosses and an astounding 30.4 completions per game average.
Davis is listed as “probable” for Saturday’s road trip to Rice (2-8, 1-5), and on Monday ECU coach Ruffin McNeill felt encouraged that his star QB would be able to play against the Owls.
“I think he’ll be ok,” McNeill said. “He’s a tough nut; it’s hurting him. I’m anxious to see how he does after today’s treatment. We held him out (of practice) last night a little bit but he is a tough kid. I hope he’s ready to go … We’ll just have to see how it is after treatment.”
If Davis can’t go on Saturday sophomore backup Brad Wornick will get the call. Wornick got some action versus the Blazers and looked sharp. On his lone series in the third quarter, Wornick was 3-for-5 for 34 yards and had two potential TD passes dropped by ECU receivers.
“(Offensive coordinator) Lincoln (Riley) reps two units during practice,” McNeill said. “Brad doesn’t get as many reps as Dominique of course, but Brad’s been ready to go.”
It wasn’t all bad news for the Pirates though, as the win over UAB allowed the team to clinch bowl eligibility for the fifth straight season.
“It was a big win … It was a short week and my first short week in 30 years, but the kids just kept fighting and kept me up and kept us up. They were not going to leave Birmingham with a loss,” McNeill said. “I was very happy about that and very pleased with our team. We became bowl eligible with the win and that was a one of our goals.”
Another one of their goals became a little closer to being achievable as Conference USA East leader UCF lost 35-21 to Southern Miss which allowed East Carolina to creep back into the hunt for its third straight C-USA title.
The Pirates lost their head-to-head matchup with UCF three weeks ago which essentially put them two games behind the Knights despite the fact that both teams have a C-USA best 5-1 conference record.
Central Florida will close out its regular season schedule with a road trip to C-USA West-leading Tulane (7-3, 4-2) before its final at Memphis.
The Pirates will travel to Rice Saturday, then host SMU (5-5, 4-2), who is also in the hunt for a West Division crown.