BYU football: East Carolina head coach praises Cougars

GREENVILLE, N.C. — Though his team fell 34-13 to BYU Saturday night, East Carolina head coach Blake Harrell would gladly schedule more games against the Cougars in the future.

“I mean, look at the crowd it brought to Greenville. Look at everything,” Harrell told reporters following the game. “... I think the hotels are sold out, and so were the restaurants, that’s a shout out to our fan base. ... Whether it’s BYU or NC State, or whoever it may be, I think those are great series to continue, and it’s very competitive.

“If we made a few plays here or there, it would be a little different tonight. I think it’s been a four-game series (with BYU), tonight was the fourth game. That series ended up two and two. We won the middle two, they won the first and the last.

Harrell continued, “But yeah, (BYU is) definitely a series you would like to see, and their fan base, and the way they do things, and (Kalani Sitake) I think is first class, and I really respect the heck out of him.”

The BYU offense started slow but got its act together after halftime, with Bear Bachmeier and company scoring their first touchdown in the third quarter and adding two more in the fourth.

Bachmeier enjoyed the most encouraging outing of his young college career, completing 18 of 25 passes for 246 yards and two total touchdowns while avoiding any sacks or turnovers.

“It’s probably the first time all year (BYU) had to play a second half really, to be honest,” Harrell said. “(Bachmeier is) a good quarterback and (offensive coordinator Aaron Roderick) does a nice job putting him in situations where he can make some easy throws. You’d love to sell out there and maybe play some hard edges and don’t let him roll out, or have the hitches or the flat balls or those types of things. But as soon as you do that, you’re going to be weak in the run game.

“So, you know, they got a really nice package, and I thought (Bachmeier) did nice job throwing the sail route. He threw it down the field, threw some over routes down the field as well. Those aren’t easy throws for a freshman, and he certainly didn’t play like that tonight. And you know, that’s a credit to him, and we’ve got to do a better job of making him play like that as well.”

With the loss, East Carolina falls to 2-2 on the season, with the Pirates opening league play Thursday against defending American Conference champion Army.

“We’ve obviously got a lot to clean up,” Harrell said. “We’ve got to reset and reload, all those things, because now you’re going into conference play in five days. ... We’ve got to clean up the mistakes that we made. That starts with me, and then we’ve got to get right back into Army and just talk to our guys about resetting their mind, you know, make sure I got our recovery going, because tomorrow, it’s right back to work, and we can’t have a day off this week because it’s going to be a quick one.”

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