Well-traveled Mitchell found home with Pirates

So many hits. So many memories. Although Khalif Mitchell admits they're getting a bit distant and fuzzy.

It's been a while, after all, since the East Carolina defensive tackle threw his weight around the Beach District as a two-way force at First Colonial High. His final high school season was way back in 2002.

"I used up all my eligibility," Mitchell says with a laugh. "I pushed it to the max. Ain't nothing wrong with that, baby."

A prep year and a transfer year extended Mitchell's college career until 2008. Little wonder high school seems ages ago. With some prompting, though, Mitchell recalls his greatest hits.

There was that "big, real good" linebacker he de-cleated with a block in the Landstown game.

"I popped him straight back and his feet came up and hit me in the mouth," Mitchell said.

There was the 17-yard run against Green Run in which Mitchell carried half the Stallion defense.

Nothing could top the hit on the Kempsville quarterback, though. It was clean, it wasn't late and he didn't celebrate. But it made a frightful sound and Mitchell saw a flag fly as he ran down field and heard his coach, Sam Scarborough, screaming in protest.

"The ref said there was no excuse to hit somebody that hard in a game," Scarborough said.

Mitchell need not concern himself with hitting too hard these days. It's his job to deliver punishment. Now fully grown at 6-foot-6 and 305 pounds, he's well-equipped for the task.

"He's the complete package," ECU coach Skip Holtz says. "He's big, he's physical and he can run. He plays with a motor and energy."

Mitchell was one of the guys collapsing the pocket in ECU's win against West Virginia and one of several clogging the middle in a win against Virginia Tech. He'll be the man in the defensive middle again Saturday as the Pirates (3-2) face Virginia and try to snap a two-game losing streak.

"I don't think we're in bad shape," says Mitchell, ever upbeat. "This time last year we were 1-4."

For Mitchell, who calls himself a "Virginian, all the way," it'll be a homecoming of sorts, even though Greenville, N.C., is closer to home than Charlottesville.

It's also closer than his first college stop, the University of North Carolina. Closer, too, to what Mitchell was looking for when he went to school.

"It's a football area," he says. "At Carolina, it was more of a basketball environment."

Mitchell went to North Carolina after a semester at Hargrave Military Academy, where he realized some of the potential he had flashed at First Colonial.

Fairly new to football and bigger than nearly everyone else in high school, Mitchell was able to get by on raw size and strength, Scarborough said.

"He'd do things the way he wanted to do, instead of the way he should have been doing them," he says. "He wasn't focused. He was really just learning. "

Mitchell started two games at UNC as a true freshman in 2004. He became a minor celebrity after his goal line tackle of N.C. State's T.A. McClendon with six seconds left forced a fumble and preserved a win.

Mitchell made 13 tackles as a sophomore in 2005 and looked like a budding star when coach John Bunting announced Mitchell would not be back in 2006. Bunting gave Mitchell the option of returning in 2007, but Mitchell wasn't interested.

"I was just having a real difficult time in my life," he says. "I didn't want to use a redshirt year at the same school. I wanted to go somewhere and make a fresh start."

Mitchell was headed to Arkansas until he discovered some of his credit hours wouldn't transfer. Hargrave coach Robert Prunty suggested ECU, which had recruited Mitchell out of high school. The Pirates were coming off a 5-6 season in Holtz's first year as coach.

"My expectations were a lot higher," Mitchell says. "But my perspective on ECU was that they were a team on the rise."

Mitchell sat out 2006 as a transfer and earned honorable mention All-Conference in 2007, despite ankle problems.

"There were only a couple games where he was truly healthy," Holtz says. "Right now, we're seeing what a healthy Khalif can do."

Nearly healthy, anyway. Mitchell has been bothered by a turf toe, but he has made 11 tackles, two for losses, and Holtz says he likes the passion he brings to the game.

The passion extends off the field, where Mitchell sounds like a spokesman for the Greenville Chamber of Commerce.

The food? Top notch, he says. The local populace? Hospitable. Mitchell even has kind words for local law enforcement.

"If we're downtown or something, the police officers will tell us when it's time to go home and we'll just go home," he says. "They'll try to make sure everyone's safe."

It's a quiet place on weekdays but can be bedlam on Saturdays. Never more than when the Pirates upset West Virginia on Sept. 6 for their second straight win against a ranked BCS conference team. The Pirates eked past Tulane after that and then fell to N.C. State and Houston.

The Pirates will try to rebound Saturday against a Virginia team coming off its best game of the year. Even so, with last year's eight-win season and Hawaii Bowl win under his belt, Mitchell has already experienced more success than he did at North Carolina, where he played on two teams that finished a combined 11-12.

"My teammates remind me every now and then that I came from North Carolina," he said. "But they know I bleed purple and gold."

Ed Miller, (757) 446-2372, ed.miller@pilotonline.com