ECU football coach Scottie Montgomery says Hokies’ tweet about hurricane ‘unfortunate’

In the era of social media, there’s little doubt that East Carolina’s football team knew about a Virginia Tech tweet that seemed to question the Pirates’ decision to cancel their Sept. 15 game against the Hokies.

ECU last Tuesday announced its football team would not be traveling to Blacksburg but instead heading to Florida to get out of the path of Hurricane Florence, a storm that made landfall on Friday as a Category 1 hurricane and has caused 23 deaths, including 17 in North Carolina.

A few hours later, Virginia Tech football posted a tweet that said the ‘Hokies are waterproof” with an image of them beating UNC during Hurricane Matthew in 2016. The tweet was deleted and associate athletic director Pete Moris apologized on Twitter, saying the tweet had been previously scheduled.

“So that’s something that’s unfortunate that happened,” ECU football coach Scottie Montgomery said during a teleconference on Monday.

Before Monday, Montgomery hadn’t publicly discussed the tweets.

“No, I really haven’t,” he said Monday in an AAC teleconference. “When you’re in a situation like we’re in and people are going through what they’re going through in our part of the state, it’s unfortunate. I haven’t heard or read some of the tweets because I’ve been dealing with our team and some of the things that are directly connected to our program.

“It’s unfortunate that some of those things happened, I can’t say they were negative or positive or whatever they may be. We were all disappointed that the game did not happen.”

ECU announced last Tuesday afternoon that instead of traveling to Virginia Tech it was boarding buses for Orlando to be closer to its game this Saturday at South Florida.

With flooding expected around Greenville, ECU canceled classes and Montgomery said the goal was to keep his players safe and out of town. He also wanted them together so he could account for them communicating with their families.

ECU (1-1) faces South Florida (3-0) in both teams’ AAC opener at 8 p.m. Saturday in Tampa.