GREENVILLE, N.C. -- The grim statistic frequently pops up when the UTEP football team's charter plane starts heading east and keeps going.
That will be the case today when a Miners squad that seems on the edge of a breakthrough, but one that hasn't yet managed it, lines up against East Carolina, 1,693 miles from the Sun Bowl, in front of 50,000 fans at Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium.
Eighteen times in its 99-year history UTEP has played a game in the Eastern time zone. It has lost 17 of those and tied one, back in 1949 at West Virginia.
So how do the Miners keep from being intimidated by those numbers?
"I had no idea about that," sophomore guard Kyle Brown said when asked about the 0-17-1 stat.
And how do they
reverse it?"We just show up," he said with a shrug. "This year is different from every other year. In other years, we were lackadaisical. Going on the road this year has been different."
Well, UTEP is 0-2 away from home in 2012, though the search for reasons this team is different from the others could begin with the third-quarter fightback at two-time defending Big 10 champion Wisconsin.
"We showed we can play with anybody in the country," UTEP quarterback Nick Lamaison said. "We already knew that. Now, everyone knows it."
Coach Mike Price, meanwhile, comes up with a different, but almost as daunting, number. When college football teams travel across two times zones, they win 15 percent of the time.
"I
don't care about time, I'm always late to stuff," tight end Kevin Perry said with his ever-present grin. "Time doesn't make a difference to me. When we get there, I'll be ready to play."Said Marylander Horace Miller: "I'm from the East Coast. It doesn't make a difference at all. We're going out there to win."
The above answers are, of course, the correct ones. This UTEP team, starting with Price, is sure it is tougher, more aggressive, more confident and less prone to intimidation than previous ones. There have been moments that have backed that up in a 1-3 start against arguably the toughest schedule in school history, but the signature victory has eluded them.
Beating East Carolina would count. While the Pirates have been under .500 since winning a league title in 2009 (13-15 in coach Ruffin McNeill's third year; 2-2 this season), they established themselves as the favorite to represent the Conference USA East Division in the league title game when they won 24-14 at Southern Miss.
More stats: UTEP is 7-14 against the C-USA East Division and 2-8 on the East Division road with five straight losses.
The Pirates, though, aren't the stereotypical rough-and-tumble East Division team that usually mashes
UTEP into the ground. McNeill came to East Carolina from Texas Tech, where he was under Mike Leach, and like the Red Raider, they run a four-receiver spread on offense and a 3-4 defense.Still, with sophomore quarterback Shane Carden making his third career start, UTEP said its first priority is to stop the nation's 113th-ranked rushing offense from moving the ball on the ground.
"We are not going to let them run the ball. They will have to beat us throwing the ball," said linebacker Jamie Irving, who should get his first start of the year today. "If they beat us throwing, good on them, but they won't beat us running."
"We've got to stop the run. We've got to make them throw the ball," cornerback Darren Woodard said. "They have a good quarterback and good receivers, so they are going to do both."
By the numbers, junior college transfer Vintavious Cooper (5.5 yards per carry) has been more effective at tailback than co-No. 1 Reggie Bullock (3.7). But the two will probably share a rotation. Carden has been accurate and taken care of the ball, but did hold it too long in taking seven sacks against North Carolina last week in a 27-6 loss.
The big focus for UTEP will be to cut down on big plays, as it has given up five scores of more than 45 yards in the three losses. ECU, though, has only one offensive touchdown of that length or longer this year.
Defensively, "They bring four guys, five guys all the time, you just don't know which guys it's going to be," Price said, and across the board UTEP is more concerned about its own execution than what East Carolina is going to do on the defensive side of the ball.
"It doesn't matter who they are, whether the defensive end is 290 (pounds) or 210," Perry said. "There's nothing anyone can show us we haven't seen. It's about executing and letting the other team worry about what they need to do to stop us."
The Miners will probably continue to use a committee at tailback until Nathan Jeffery proves he is 100 percent following his opening-game groin injury. But they've found a hot hand each game, and now Lamaison is getting into a nice groove with receivers Mike Edwards and Jordan Leslie.
The stakes, obviously, are huge. Lose and UTEP is 1-4 and would have to win five of its last seven to salvage anything at all. Win and they are 1-0 in conference and suddenly a co-favorite in C-USA's West Division with Tulsa.
"As far as I'm concerned, we can erase," the 1-3 start, Price said. "If we'd won a couple of games instead of going 1-3, I'd be bragging like hell about it. But it's a new season, a new day and it doesn't matter what happened before."
Said center Eloy Atkinson: "This is a brand new season, what we've been working for. The other season was the preseason; it was to get us ready. Playing big, athletic, strong teams, we've built a lot of confidence and established depth for the rest of the season."
"This is a big deal, the start of a new season right here," Edwards said.
And if UTEP can improve to 1-17-1 in the Eastern time zone, it will feel like the start of a new program.
"Not winning on the road is last year, it's behind us," Woodard said.
"We can play wherever," Irving said. "We can play somebody in a parking lot, it still doesn't matter."
Bret Bloomquist may be reached at bbloomquist@elpasotimes.com; 546-6359. Follow him on Twitter @bretbloomquist.
Game time
Source: http://www.elpasotimes.com/ci_21657890/miners-not-road-worriers?source=rss_viewed
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