GREENVILLE — They say “The Walking Dead” is fictional but you can’t blame the 45,000 fans that showed up at Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium on Saturday for confusing East Carolina’s 55-14 beat down of a lifeless Southern Miss team for a real live episode.
The Pirates (5-2, 3-1 C-USA) ran over, around and through the Golden Eagles, scoring on nine of their 13 possessions, while keeping USM (0-6, 0-3 C-USA) scoreless until a garbage time touchdown in the fourth quarter.
“I thought the kids executed well offensively, defensively and on special teams,” East Carolina coach Ruffin McNeill said. “It was one of our best performances on all three sides of the ball.”
East Carolina quarterback Shane Carden was stellar once again as he aired it out for 308 yards and three touchdowns on 30 for 37 passing and ran for a score despite not playing a single snap in the fourth quarter.
Carden led the Pirates to touchdowns on their first two drives of the game and from there the rout was on as they tallied 55 unanswered points to hand the Golden Eagles their 18th straight loss.
The hot start was a welcome sight to an ECU team that lost a taxing triple overtime game to Tulane a week ago.
“I think for us personally it was pretty important,” Carden said. “We wanted to get out and establish ourselves, especially in the red zone and on the goal line instead of settling for field goals.”
Wide receiver Justin Hardy continued his assault on opposing defenses, catching 10 passes for 126 yards and moved into second place on ECU’s all-time touchdown receptions list when he caught his 22nd career scoring pass on the first drive of the game from one yard out.
“That’s great. Records are made to be broken,” Hardy said. “I just go out there and play my game and whatever happens, happens.”
Hardy, who saw limited work in the second half, now stands two TD catches away from passing Lance Lewis for the No. 1 spot and has caught 27 passes for 356 yards in the past two contests.
Carden followed up on his TD pass to Hardy with an 11-yard scoring strike to Isaiah Jones, before Vintavious Cooper darted his way through the USM defense for a 21-yard TD run at the 11:02 mark in the second quarter.
The Pirates would add another 10 points before the quarter ended as Carden scored on a 1-yard plunge and Warren Harvey hit on a 27-yard field goal.
Meanwhile, the Golden Eagles showed the faintest of pulses, especially on offense where they were no match for an energized ECU defense. After two quarters of play USM had accumulated a mere 94 yards, 12 less than Hardy had alone, three first downs and possessed the ball for only eight of the first 30 minutes as it trailed 31-0 at the break.
“They were better, obviously,” USM coach Todd Monken said. “… I wouldn’t have expected that through three quarters we would have about 100 yards of total offense.”
Starting quarterback Allen Bridgford finished the game completing only two of his 11 attempts for 15 yards. Backup freshman QB Nick Mullens faired better as he hit on 9 of his 17 attempts for 97 yards and connected with Marquise Ricard and Bruce Johnson for TD passes of 15 and 8 yards, respectively.