Purple Tops Gold In Spring Game, 23-14

GREENVILLE, N.C. – East Carolina officially closed out its spring practice session Saturday afternoon with the playing of the Annual Purple-Gold game inside Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium with the Purple team take home the victory 23-14. The scrimmage capped off the 39th Annual Pigskin Pig-Out festivities, which was sponsored by Piggly-Wiggly.

Under sixth-year head coach Mike Houston, the Pirates played a four-quarter game with a running clock that lasted about 85 minutes under partly cloudy skies with the temperatures in the low 70's. Gold jumped out to an early 14-7 lead after the first quarter thanks to a Jake Garcia 26-yard touchdown pass to Brock Spalding for the games first score. Katin Houser quickly knotted the game at seven-all when he connected on a 27-yard touchdown strike to Anthony Smith before Garcia scored on a four-yard run for the early first period lead.

Purple tallied the lone points in the second quarter on an Andrew Conrad 30-yard field goal making it a 14-10 lead for the Gold at intermission. The Purple defense pitched a second half shutout while its offense scored 13 points to win the contest by nine. Conrad drilled a 51-yard field goal in the third quarter and connected on his third field goal of the contest from 27 yards in the fourth period. Purple's final points of the contest came on a Kamaurri McKinley 30-yard interception capping the scoring at 23-14.

"Just really excited, really pleased," Houston said of the final spring scrimmage. "You know, I've been watching that on a daily basis from our offense – excited that our fan base got to see it. What a great day, that was the biggest crowd, I think, we've had a spring game easily since I've been here. I don't know when last time we had one like that. Beautiful weather today – but just really appreciate our fan base and Pirate Nation showing up to support our kids. They've had a great spring and today was the perfect culmination to a really successful spring. Now we got to move into the next phase which is getting ready for summer. You know, the next time we step into Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium in front of fans, it's going to be for real."

ECU's offense tallied 554 yards (401 pass, 153 rush) for an average of 8.2 yards per play, scored three touchdowns and connected on three field goal attempts. Notable offensive highlights consisted of a 62-yard reception from Houser to Anthony Smith, while Garcia connected with Kelan Robinson on a 70-yard ariel strike – both in the first half of the game. In all, the Pirate quarterbacks completed 11 passes that went for 10 or more yards, while the running game had six plays of 10 plus yards.

Defensively, the Gold squad forced two turnovers coming on interceptions from Isaiah Brown-Murray (25 yards) and McKinley (30 yards), while the Purple had one turnover on a pick from TyMir Brown (no return). Collectively the defense recorded 10.0 tackles for loss for minus 27 yards, which included five sacks for -19 yards.

Players Mentioned

TyMir Brown

Isaiah Brown-Murray

Andrew Conrad

Jake Garcia

Katin Houser

Kamaurri McKinley

Kelan Robinson

Anthony Smith

Brock Spalding

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