Record Breaking Night
September 04, 2004 09:30 PM | General
September 4, 2004
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – West Virginia coach Rich Rodriguez spent all summer wondering if he had a tailback good enough to keep up the Mountaineers’ streak of eight straight 1,000 yard rushers.
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| Kay-Jay Harris hurdles a tackle to reach the end zone on the way to his record-breaking, 337-yard performance Saturday night against East Carolina.
(All-Pro Photography/Dale Sparks) |
He may have gotten his answer Saturday night.
Kay-Jay Harris is already one-third of the way there after running 25 times for 337 yards and scoring four touchdowns to lead West Virginia to an easy 56-23 victory over East Carolina Saturday night at newly named Milan Puskar Stadium.
Harris’ 337 yards were a West Virginia and Big East record. The previous school mark was 291 set by Kerry Marbury against Temple in 1971 and the previous Big East record was 299 yards by Miami’s Edgerrin James set against UCLA in 1998.
“Any runs he had in the second half were for us to get into a rhythm,” said Rodriguez. “He ran the ball hard and he got a good workout in today. He had some nice holes, too.”
“My offensive line did a helluva job,” said Harris. “I was coming through the line and the first person I ever saw was the safety all the time. As we’re taught in practice, the one thing we’re taught to do is to handle safeties and I was able to do that all night. The credit goes to the offensive line, the tight ends and the wide receivers blocking downfield. I just did what I was coached to do and ran to daylight.”
Harris was able to break West Virginia’s 33-year record despite coming off the bench. When asked if Harris will be the starter for next Saturday’s game against Central Florida, Rodriguez smiled and replied: “It depends on how he does in practice.
“I’ve always said that he’s a talented guy,” Rodriguez said. “When he does things the right way and he breaks loose, he’s hard to catch because he’s a big guy that can run. But there was no secret motivation or anything like that. It is what it is and was what it was.”
Things started off badly for East Carolina (0-1) even before the opening kickoff when a mix-up on the coin toss enabled West Virginia to get the ball to start both halves. West Virginia won the toss and elected to defer while one of the ECU players mistaken said they will kick the ball. Pirate coach John Thompson argued the decision to no avail.
On the very first play of the game of the game, Marshall found a wide-open Brandon Myles down the far sideline for 51 yards to the East Carolina 10. Five plays later, Jason Colson skirted into the end zone from a yard out to make it 7-0, West Virginia.
East Carolina answered with nine-play drive on its initial possession that ended with a Cam Broadwell 20-yard field goal. The big play of the drive came on a trick play that resulted in a 58-yard pass completion from James Pinkney to Robert Tillman that moved the ball to the Mountaineer seven. Pinkney handed the ball to running back Marvin Townes, who turned around and gave it back to Pinkney for the long pass play.
West Virginia tacked on another seven points on the back of Harris, who rambled 43 yards to take the ball to the Pirate three. Two plays later, Harris walked into the end zone to make it 14-3, WVU.
East Carolina’s last real opportunity to stay in the game came with 10:55 left in the second quarter when Don Whitehead picked off an ill-advised Marshall pass at the WVU 40.
But the Pirates eventually gave up the ball on downs at the WVU 33.
After the change of possession, Harris took a first-down handoff and raced 48 yards to the Pirate 17. Jason Colson cleaned up the drive with a 15-yard burst up the middle.
The Mountaineers made it 28-3 on its next possession when they drove 46 yards in six plays, all on the ground. Harris ran for four and 25 yards to move it the Pirate 17, and Harris finished the drive with a five-yard TD run.
After forcing ECU to punt, Pac-Man Jones electrified the crowd by taking a Ryan Dougherty punt and racing 76 yards for a score.
An Ernest Hunter interception set up another score when Harris rambled 51 yards for his third TD of the game. The 51 yards put him over the 200-yard mark for the first half, and set a school record with 168 yards for a quarter and 223 yards for a half.
East Carolina was able get into the end zone at the end of the half when Pinkney was able to find Edwin Rios well behind the West Virginia secondary for a 48-yard touchdown. Broadwell’s PAT missed wide right.
After a first half when Marshall completed just 3 of 8 passes for 51 yards with an interception, Rodriguez used the opening drive of the second half to work out the kinks in the passing game. Marshall hit Henry for 12 yards and then later found him wide open for a 60-yard touchdown.
The rest of the third quarter was bogged down with WVU penalties and ECU turnovers. Freshman defensive back Larry Williams picked off a Pinkney pass in the end zone and later in the quarter, Jay Henry pounded on a Marvin Townes fumble.
A Marshall 81-yard touchdown run was called back for holding.
East Carolina scored its second touchdown of the game early in the fourth quarter when Pinkney found Rios in the end zone for a second time from 12 yards.
Harris capped off his record-setting evening with a 76-yard touchdown run with 9:35 remaining in the fourth.
The Pirates crossed the goal line once more with 1:35 left when Pinkney tossed his third TD pass of the evening to Kevin Roach from five yards out.
“We gave them two cheap ones,” said Rodriguez. “We knew they were going to throw the ball and we got a little bit of a pass rush, but not to where I think it’s enough.”
Despite the easy victory, there were plenty of things for Rodriguez to correct with his team. WVU was whistled for a staggering 14 penalties for 141 yards including several personal fouls. The passing game was erratic, completing 6 of 15 passes with 2 interceptions, and West Virginia also had a tough time getting a consistent pass rush on ECU’s passer.
Rodriguez touched on several of those topics during his post-game press conference.
“It was a frustrating game to be honest coaching it,” he said. “I didn’t think we played particularly well in all three phases. Penalties were embarrassing and I’ve got to go back to coaching.
“You say, ‘Well it’s the first game and you make mistakes and it happens,’” Rodriguez added. “We’re lucky it didn’t come back to beat us. It cost us a lot of yardage and points and field position. We can’t beat ourselves, that’s for sure. But the guys did play hard and we had some good performances. Anytime you win it is good.”
West Virginia has now won four straight against the Pirates since 2000, scoring at least 37 points in each victory. The Mountaineers have also piled up 1,389 yards rushing against the Pirates in the last three meetings.
“I thought the intensity was good and we had a great crowd,” Rodriguez said. ‘I thought the o-line made a few nice adjustments and was opening up some decent holes and I thought defensively we did well against the run. And it was nice to get a punt return even though punting was less than stellar and kickoffs were worse than that. It wasn’t our best performance but again we won pretty comfortably and there are a lot of teams in an opening game in our situation that would have liked to have had the same thing.”
West Virginia (1-0) returns to action next Saturday at Central Florida (0-1), a 34-6 loser to Wisconsin today.
Scoring Summary
WV – Colson 1 run (Cooper kick)
ECU – Broadwell 20 FG
WV – Harris 2 run (Cooper kick)
WV – Colson 15 run (Cooper kick)
WV – Harris 5 run (Cooper kick)
WV – Jones 76 punt return (Cooper kick)
WV – Harris 51 run (Cooper kick)
ECU – Rios 48 pass from Pinkney (Kick failed)
WV – Henry 60 pass from Marshall (Cooper kick)
ECU – Rios 12 pass from Pinkney (Broadwell kick)
WV – Harris 76 run (Cooper kick)
ECU – Roadh 5 pass from Pinkney (Broadwell kick)
Individual Statistics
Rushing – ECU: Townes 15-29, Pinkney 3-16, Johnson 2-7, Brown 8-7, Total 28-59; WVU – Harris 25-337, Colson 13-64, Marshall 9-41, Wright 7-28, Hales 1-11, Bednarik 1-minus 3, Total 56-478.
Passing – ECU: Pinkney 26-51-2-322-3; WVU: Marshall 6-15-2-143-1.
Receiving – ECU: Rios 7-113, Brown 5-34, Good 3-25, Tillman 2-65, Levesque 2-26, Howard 2-19, Harmon 2-19, Bowling 1-11, Townes 1-5, Roach 1-5, Total 26-322; WVU: Henry 4-86, Myles 1-51, Colson 1-6, Total 6-143.
Attendance: 59,172
