Team preview: East Carolina

Blue Ribbon Yearbook previews the 2005-06 college basketball season, exclusively on Insider.

Updated: October 20, 2005, 3:27 PM ET
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(Information in this team report is as of October 1.)

COACH AND PROGRAM

These newfangled driving directions on the Internet, they're so inaccurate. They still list the distance between Charlottesville, Va., and Kinston, N.C. as 263 miles. Those who have actually run the route know better -- it's 20 years.

At the end of the 1984-85 season, a scruffy grad assistant at the University of Virginia named Ricky Stokes trundled off to seek his own professional fortunes. Tucked away in his luggage was five years' worth of education (four as a player) gleaned from Stokes' coach and mentor at Virginia, Terry Holland.

Twenty years later, after stops at Bowling Green, Wake Forest, Virginia (again), Texas, Virginia Tech and South Carolina, Stokes and Holland are finally able to compare notes. As East Carolina's athletics director, Holland hoisted Stokes on board as the new men's basketball coach on March 16, 2005. Stokes replaces Bill Herrion, who went 70-98 in six years at ECU.


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