ECU hopes to play fast and fast, carry over great play when they face UCF Saturday night

GREENVILLE, N.C. (WITN) - ECU football is coming off three straight wins and are looking for two straight great performances when they play Central Florida Saturday night.

“You know learning how to get over a win. Building on a win and trying to play better this week you know it’s a fine line there,” says ECU head football coach Mike Houston, “You know you wanna be very focused, you want to be very intense, but you don’t want to be uptight, you want to be relaxed. Because, you wanna play fast. You want to play extremely aggressive. I feel like we found that balance last week and you know we want to keep up that balance.”

ECU’s defense will have his hands full on Saturday night. They called the Knights fast and fast.

“The tempo was really fast no matter how much you talk about it, no matter how much you prepare for it it was still fast. And then the speed,” says ECU defensive coordinator Blake Harrell.

UCF has scored 37 or more points in each of its last five games against the Pirates. They have won all 5.

“We do it in terms of our scouts, we script it out with tempo situations, with pre-huddle situations,” says Harrell, “Then we go against our offense good on good. We’ve done that every day for the last two weeks.”

They know they’re gonna have to score. UCF scored 41 unanswered points the last time out in Greenville. The Pirates offense has been awesome and they hope to spread the ball around.

“It makes you excited about getting back out there. You know when you play well it looks really good. When you don’t play well it looks really bad. You can be ugly right there too,” says ECU offensive coordinator Donnie Kirkpatrick, “But I think the same thing, you worry you got to keep them all happy. Much like basketball, everybody’s got to get their shot. We are trying to spread it around. At the same time the guys that are making plays you were trying to put things in to give them up opportunity.”

ECU and UCF are slated to kickoff at 6 o’clock Saturday at the Bounce House. The game is being streamed online on ESPN+. UCF is currently 10 point favorites.

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