Florida Gators to Face East Carolina in Birmingham Bowl

The Florida Gators (6-5) will face East Carolina in the Birmingham Bowl on Saturday, Jan. 3, 2015. Kickoff is scheduled for 1 P.M.

The East Carolina Pirates are 8-4 and finished behind three co-champions of the 10 team American Athletic Conference, which includes the remnants of the football-playing schools of the Big East Conference, though the Pirates come by way of Conference USA.

The Pirates are coming off a stunning 32-30 loss to Central Florida, giving up a Hail Mary to end the game. At one point this season, East Carolina was 6-1 with five winnable games ahead of it, but it went 2-3 during that stretch.

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Though many Gator fans will note that the bowl lacks in prestige or a big-name opponent, this is a great match-up for a team that needs to go into the 2015 off-season on a high note and some much-needed confidence.

The Gator’s bowl game with the Pirates will be a match up the strong and weak units of both teams. For the Gators, defensive coordinator DJ Durkin will do the coaching and he will have his hands full with a pass-oriented and productive East Carolina offense. In 2014, ECU was the NCAA’s seventh ranked offense, putting up 533 yards and 37.2 points per game.

East Carolina coach Ruffin McNeill was an assistant to former Texas Tech coach Mike Leach for a decade, where he learned the pass-oriented “Air Raid” offense. The Pirate run a version of that offensive system, which puts the quarterback in the shotgun formation, often with four receivers in the set. The quarterback is given a lot of freedom to audible in the system, based on the formations they see from the defense.

In this system, Pirates senior quarterback Shane Carden has been a top passer for the past two seasons. This year he is the NCAAs second leading passer, with 4309 total yards, 28 touchdowns and a 65 percent completion rate. Cardin put up big numbers in 2013 too, with 4139 total yards, ranking seventh in the NCAA. Carden’s top target is Justin Hardy, who is the fifth leading pass catcher in the NCAAs, with 1334 yards and nine touchdowns.

Defensively, East Carolina hasn’t shown much of a capacity to stop anyone, ranking 40t in total defense in the NCAAs, giving up an average 370 yards and 25.7 points a game. This is just the unit that the 112th ranked Florida offense needs to see to finish this season.

The Pirates were pleased at how their season had started, with wins over ACC conference opponents Virginia Tech and UNC. And they even gave the SEC a run when they lost a close contest with South Carolina, coming short 33-23 in their season’s second game in Columbia.

In late October, the New York Times profiled the team as one that could earn the so-called “Group of Five” spots in one of the six playoff-affiliated bowls. At the time, ECU was considered the biggest threat to then-undefeated Marshall for the spot, which ended up being awarded to Boise State from the Mountain West conference.

With it’s weak finish, East Carolina is a team that will be needing a big win going into the final month of recruiting season, not to mention the recognition for beating what new coach Jim McElwain calls one of the “best brands” in college football.

But for McElwain’s sake, the Gators need a win for recruiting as well, as a final game loss may send the message that the Gators roster doesn’t have enough talent to win. Additionally, this game can serve as a scouting exercise for their second game of next year season, when the Pirates are scheduled to the Swamp on Sept. 12, 2015.

The game will be played at Legion Field, where University of Alabama Birmingham held its games before its football program was controversially ended last week. For 40 years, the stadium was the home to the Iron Bowl game between Auburn and Alabama. The historic stadium was first originally constructed in 1926, but wikipedia says there’s been upgrades since then, so that shouldn’t discourage any fans from buying tickets.

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