Given that I have 10 or less venues left in Mission 351 that
are within driving distance for me, I had to plan more flyaway trips this
season than ever before. On this
weekend, it was a fairly short flight over to North Carolina for Saturday
doubleheader starting at Arena #166, Williams Arena at Minges Coliseum, on the
campus of East Carolina University (ECU) in Greenville, NC. I have to admit a visit to ECU was pretty low
on my list of schools in North Carolina, but it became much more important to
make this stop this season when Connecticut announced they were leaving The
American and returning to the Big East.
As such, the schedule worked out perfect when UConn was slotted to play
the ECU Pirates on a late February Saturday afternoon.
Driving up to the arena, which is located right next to the
school’s football stadium, gave me hope that the building was going to be nicer
than I had in my mind not having really seen any ECU games on TV in the
past. After walking in, I quickly found
out that wasn’t really the case as the concourses were small and cramped and
the seating bowl relatively old. Most
impressive, however, was the fact that the concession stands sold two different
sizes of souvenir cups…one of the three key items I try to collect from every
game I attend and the one item that is usually not present in smaller, more obscure
venues like ECU. Williams Arena holds
probably 8,000 folks or so and it was maybe half full at best on this day. I can’t say I was surprised by the small turnout
given UConn and ECU aren’t exactly natural rivals, nor do they have recent
basketball pedigrees that are anywhere near comparable. I was impressed, however, how many UConn fans
there were in the building, which was great to see given UConn was having a
little less success this season than hoped.
On this day, though, UConn would give one of their best
performances in recent memory, especially on the road. The Huskies got off to a quick start building
a double-digit lead behind some surprisingly hot 3-point shooting and solid
defense on ECU’s best player, Sophomore Jayden Gardner. UConn held the lead throughout the first half
and took a 12-point lead into the break.
There were a few runs back and forth where ECU managed to trim the lead
early in the second half, but UConn punched back and stemmed the tide in those
runs quite well for being on the road.
Ultimately, the Huskies took a 84-63 win home on this day to get back to
.500 in the conference for the first time this season led by a big 27-point
outing from Senior guard Christian Vital and a 19-point performance from
breakout Freshman guard James Bouknight.
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| Outside view of Minges Coliseum in Greenville, NC |
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| Inside Williams Arena at Minges Coliseum |
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| Opening tip between the Pirates and Huskies |
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| Some pick and roll action from UConn's Josh Carlton and James Bouknight |
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