Gallery Furniture Bowl
2000
East Carolina 40
Texas Tech 27
HOUSTON (AP) -- When it was over, only the East Carolina Pirates and
their gleeful fans went home happy. East Carolina scored 34 straight
first-half points, including two 1-yard runs by Leonard Henry and a
71-yard punt return by Keith Stokes, as the Pirates stunned Texas Tech
40-27 in the first galleryfurniture.com Bowl on Wednesday night.
"I never thought we'd come out like that at the start," said Pirates
quarterback David Garrard, voted the game's most valuable player and
offensive player of the game. "But we wanted to keep on pounding and
pounding. We did that all the way."
A crowd of 33,899 saw the first bowl game played in the Astrodome since
the last Bluebonnet Bowl in 1987. But ticketing problems caused hundreds
of fans to miss much of the first half standing at the will-call window
waiting to get their tickets.
In a game expected to be an offensive shootout, only East Carolina came
through in the first half with an assortment of trick plays and fancy
running by Stokes. He had 266 total yards in the game and was voted the
special teams player of the game. Stokes had five kickoff returns for
105 yards, three punt returns for 82 yards, rushed for 33 yards on two
carries and caught five passes for 46 yards.
"To come out the first series and go down the field like that was big,"
Henry said. "It established the whole concept of the game for the team.
We knew we had to establish the run because they were not going to let
us go deep with the pass so we had to run the football and make short
passes."
Stokes returned the opening kickoff 37 yards and Garrard capped the
drive with a 6-yard touchdown run.
The Pirates followed with an on-side kick that was recovered by
Marcellus Harris. Although that surprise play didn't result in any
points on the drive, Stokes took Tech's next punt 71 yards for a
touchdown and Henry scored on a 1-yard run with 4:26 left in the first,
completing a 20-point opening period.
Garrard
hit Derrick Collier with a 44-yard touchdown pass and Henry scored on
another 1-yard run for a 34-0 lead in the second quarter. Garrard
completed 17 of 27 passes for 229 yards and rushed 33 yards on 13
carries.
Tech rallied behind Kliff Kingsbury, who threw four touchdown passes,
three in the second half to cut the Pirates' big first-half bulge. The
Red Raiders finally got on the board with a 7-yard touchdown pass from
Kingsbury to Derek Dorris with 1:39 left in the half.
"To get down 34-0 is a pretty big hole to climb out of," Kingsbury said.
"I don't think they were a super defense. We just made them look good
today."
The Raiders kept charging in the second half as Kingsbury hit Darrell
Jones with a 65-yard touchdown pass with 13:11 to go in the third
quarter to make it 34-14. After East Carolina's Kevin Miller kicked
field goals of 36 and 35 yards, Kingsbury threw a touchdown pass of 17
yards to Cole Roberts and a 3-yard pass to Dorris to make it 40-27.
"Whatever I did this week to avoid that happening, I didn't get it
done," Tech coach Mike Leach said. "It wasn't a bowl game, it was just a
game. We went out and got outplayed."
The last college bowl game played in the Astrodome was on Dec. 21, 1987,
when Texas defeated Pittsburgh 32-27, ending a 28-year run for the bowl.
Tech's bowl record dropped to 5-18-1, and the Red Raiders have lost five
of their last six postseason games. East Carolina improved its bowl
record to 7-2.
Attendance: 33,899
Scoring Summary
First Quarter
ECU- Garrard 6 run (kick failed)
ECU- Stokes 71 punt return (Miller kick)
ECU- Henry 1 run (Miller kick)
Second Quarter
ECU- Collier 44 pass from Garrard (Miller kick)
ECU- Henry 1 run (Miller kick)
TTU- Dorris 7 pass from Kingsbury (Birkholz kick)
Third Quater
TTU- Jones 65 pass from Kingsbury (Birkholz kick)
ECU- FG Miller 36
ECU- FG Miller 35
Fourth Quarter
TTU- Roberts 17 pass from Kingsbury (Birkholz kick)
TTU- Dorris 3 pass from Kingsbury (two-point conversion failed)
Individual Statistics
Rushing
ECU- Henry 20-92, Burns 6-52, Garrard 13-33, Stokes 2-33, Gilliam 3-24
TTU- R Williams 9-55, S Williams 2-18
Passing
ECU- Garrard 17-27-229
TTU- Kingsbury 31-49-307
Receiving
ECU- Stokes 5-46, M Harris 3-76, Burns 2-18, Copper 2-12, Collier 1-44
TT- Dorris 7-53, Jones 6-147, Baker 4-52
