The No. 4 Cincinnati Bearcats traveled down to Greenville, North Carolina to take on AAC foe ECU Pirates in the regular season finale. With a win the Cincinnati would finish the regular season 12-0 and host the AAC Championship game against Houston next week, with a loss Houston would host the game and Cincinnati’s College Football Playoff hopes would be down the drain. Michael Young, Jr. and Malik Vann both weren’t in the starting lineups, but are available if needed as Tyler Scott and Jowon Briggs started in front of the injured Bearcats.
ECU got the ball first and Cincinnati’s defense forced a 3 and out, it was followed by a Ryan Royer blocked punt. After two sacks Cincinnati kicked attempted a 45 yard field goal that Alex Bales missed. ECU drove down and made a 35 yard field goal to take an early 3-0 lead. After a few drives Desmond Ridder hit Leonard Taylor for a 44 yard touchdown to give them a 7-3 leads. Curtis Brooks had a huge sack on third down to force an ECU punt. Jerome Ford scored from 2 yards out to give them a 14-3 lead. Ridder found Alec Pierce for a 28 yard touchdown to give them a 21-3 lead. Cincinnati was in the red zone and Ford fumbled at the 2 yard line to give ECU some life before the half.
Cincinnati outgained ECU 325 to 77 in the first half.
In the first drive of the third quarter Ridder threw an interception to Warren Saba. ECU didn’t do anything with that drive, but after another failed drive, ECU made a 44 yard field goal after an iffy offsides penalty nullified a Ja’von Hicks block on the 49 yard attempt. Cincinnati is up 21-6 late in the third quarter. ECU was driving, but had to attempt a 35 yard field goal, Arquon Bush blocked the attempt, Ahmad Gardner scooped and took it to the house to give the road team a 28-6 lead. In the next drive Holton Ahlers hit Jsi Hatfield for a 12 yard score to cut the lead to 28-13. During that drive Gardner got dinged up and had to miss a play that was the scoring play. A big holding call that negated a 12 yard Ford run and a drop by Taylor led to a Bearcats punt. The next play Darrian Beavers picked off Ahlers. After getting in the red zone, Ridder threw another interception in the end zone and it was caught by Saba who had two interceptions this game. On fourth down ECU went for it and Jabari Taylor got a sack fumble that was recovered by Marcus Brown. The play gave the Bearcats the ball on ECU’s side of the field with less than four minutes left in the game. Ryan Montgomery scored from 2 yards out to give the road team a 35-13 lead with 1:44 left in the fourth quarter.
Ridder finished 17-of-31 passing for 301 yards, two touchdowns and two interceptions. Pierce finished with eight receptions for 136 yards and a touchdown. Ford had 83 yards on a touchdown. Joel Dublanko had 10 tackles, 1.5 tackles for loss and 1.5 sacks.
With the win Cincinnati is now 12-0 (8-0 in the AAC) and with the 35-13 they will host Houston in the AAC Championship game next weekend at Nippert Stadium.
