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ECU Looks for More in Wild Southern DII Conf

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ECU Looks for More in Wild Southern DII Conf

The Southern Rugby Conference has shown in just a couple of weeks that just about anybody can beat just about anybody on any given weekend.

Games have been close, and favored teams have been surprised repeatedly, and it could happen again this week.

East Carolina knows all about that as they survived a scare in their league opener earlier this month, edging Appalachian State 35-31.

Now they face Elon, a team that This might be the game of the fall in the Southern Rugby Conference as East Carolina takes on Elon University Saturday.

Elon started their season with a 21-0 defeat of UNC-Charlotte and then were edged 19-14 in a midweek game against UNC-Greensboro. UNCW and Furman have also recorded close wins, while Appalachian State rebounded to win handily over UNC-Charlotte.

So back to ECU v Elon. This looks like it should be East Carolina’s game, but they can’t be complacent.

In their opener against Appalachian State, ECU were up 12-0 in the first 15 minutes, but AHO came back and took the lead 19-17 at halftime. Appalachian then extended their lead to 24-17.

But wing Logan Harris made a lovely offload to inside center Vicente Villena who raced in for a pretty, long-range try. Then No. 8 Jordan Voss scored on a pick-and-go, and ECU held on - thanks in large part to rookie prop Chris Parkers’ goalkicking - to win 36-31.

Voss and Villena were huge for ECU and Parker, whose older brother Daniel is also a prop and also scored for ECU, is a nice addition.

What ECU needs to do now is be fitter and make sure they don’t let teams back into games. And you have to wonder if some of their impact subs will get a start.

Also in action this weekend, 1-0 UNC-Greensboro visits UNC-Charlotte, which is 0-2.

Furman, 25-24 winners over Coastal Carolina in then 57-5 winners over College of Charleston, will visit The Citadel (0-1), Western Carolina, whose opener was rained out, plays 1-1 Appalachian State, and Lander (1-1) visits UNC-Wilmington (1-0).