ADA — When the 2009 football season began, Lucas Peters was the running backs coach on an East Central University football team looking for its school’s first winning season in four years. When the Tigers take the field Saturday afternoon in San Antonio against new Lone Star Conference member Incarnate Word, Peters will be the quarterback on a team looking for its first victory this fall.

As Tim McCarty began his second tour as ECU head football coach, having Peters under center had to seem like the longest of longshots, a virtual impossibility on a team with a senior quarterback — Marcus Johnson — who already owned almost all of the school’s career, single-game and single-season passing records and a junior back-up — Josh Phillips — with a proven track record of his own.

But midway through last week’s 43-6 loss to second-ranked Abilene Christian, Peters suddenly looked like McCarty’s only option. Johnson struggled so much in McCarty’s offensive scheme that he was a wide a receiver by Week 3, and Phillips has completed less than 50 percent of his passes while directing an offense that has not only been the worst in the LSC this fall but, statistically, has to rank among the most anemic in the history of the conference.

Enter Peters, who gave the Tigers a second-half spark against ACU and, improbably, will make the first start Saturday (kickoff 2 p.m.) of a collegiate playing career that began with a lot of promise several years ago but appeared to have ended when he became a graduate assistant on McCarty’s staff this fall.

“He will start this week,” McCarty said of Peters, who completed 6-of-12 passes for 83 yards and directed the only ECU scoring drive of the day against ACU en route to being named the Tigers’ offensive player of the week. “He did a really nice job. He knows how to manage a game.

“I was surprised with some of the things he did,” McCarty said. “A quarterback is ultimately a kind of general — he has to be able to understand how to attack what he sees, and he was able to do all those things.”

Peters originally signed with Division 1-AA Texas State out of high school, then he transferred to ECU a couple of years ago and, once again, didn’t play a down. He finally decided to try coaching, and when Johnson and Phillips struggled to spark the offense, he approached McCarty about donning a uniform once again.

“You sit down and think ‘wow, I don’t know about all this’,” McCarty — who had seven other quarterbacks on his roster when the season began — said of his reaction to Peters’ suggestion. “We had to check his eligibility, and that was fine (Peters has at least two and perhaps three years of eligibility remaining), then we started looking at how he threw the ball and how he managed the offense, and he’s been able to do that.

“This wasn’t necessarily a thought for sure (when the season began), but we try to be as resourceful as anybody,” McCarty noted. “We’re trying to win games and give our kids chances to make plays, and he allowed us the possibility to get that done.”

If Peters is going to make a splash in his first start for the Tigers, McCarty has picked a good week to turn over the offense to him. Incarnate Word, which will become a full-fledged member of the LSC next season, is in only its second year as a football school, and, although the Cardinals are 2-3 this fall, their schedule hasn’t compared to the Murderer’s Row ECU has faced through the first six weeks of the season.

“They’ve played a really interesting schedule,” McCarty said of the Cardinals, who rallied from a 35-7 deficit to beat Division II independent Panhandle State, 38-35, last week. “They have played an NAIA school (Langston, which beat Incarnate Word, 17-14, on Sept. 26), a couple of Division II schools (Arkansas Tech and LSC member Midwestern State) and a school from Mexico (Monterrey Tech, which lost to the Cardinals, 42-39, in the season opener.

In contrast, ECU has played four teams — Nebraska-Omaha, Texas A&M-Kingsville;, Tarleton State and Abilene Christian — who were in the Division II Top 25 when they beat the Tigers and a fifth — Angelo State — that made its first appearance in the rankings after winning at Norris Field in Week 4.

“We definitely have been battle-tested,” McCarty said. “Our team has been on the bus 52 hours so far (in out-of-state road trips to Omaha, Kingsville and Tarleton and an in-state trek to Tahlequah for a Week 5 loss to Northeastern) and we’ll add another 14 this week. That’s a lot of road time.

“I see a team (in Incarnate Word) that we match up with age-wise,” he added. “They’re a young team. It’s a second-year program, but they’re well-coached and they play hard. Any team we play is always good enough. That’s the attitude we take every week.”

ECU’s defense — coming off its best effort of the season in the 17-7 loss at Northeastern — surrendered a season-high 538 yards to ACU last week, but the Tigers won the turnover battle for the third straight week, 2-1, giving them 12 takeaways in their past three games.

“Defensively, we gave up some big plays,” McCarty said. “If we eliminate those five plays, it’s a different ball game.”

Tyler McGrew was ECU’s defensive player of the week after making five tackles and grabbing the ninth interception for the Tiger defense in three weeks, and McCarty also singled out safety Norris Wrenn — who was in on eight tackles to remain among the LSC leaders for the season and also forced a fumble — and Xerxes Griffin — who was in on four tackles and recovered that fumble.

Alex Woodley, who equalled an ECU record with four interceptions against Northeastern, had four tackles and four assists against ACU and also gave the Tigers a lift on special teams, returning five kickoffs for 130 yards.

Ada High product Chad Roark had his best game of the season at center and was named lineman of the week, and McCarty said more consistent quarterback play should enable other areas of the offense to move forward.

“When the quarterback position is managing the game the right way, you start seeing progress at some other positions,” he explained. “We’re holding our own in the running game, and from a protection standpoint we’re doing pretty well (the ECU offensive line has given up 13 sacks through six games, compared to a league-record 47 allowed in 2008).

“We’re not getting whipped up front,” McCarty said. “The (two) sacks we gave up last week were because of mental errors.”

Despite seeing his team manhandled by five of its six opponents this season, McCarty said he believes his program is making positive strides.

“We’re really starting to see some things happen,” he said. “The kids really competed hard last week. Going forward, I feel a little better about the offense.

“The reality is we didn’t win the game, we played our fourth ranked team in six weeks, and we’re hitting the road this week for the fifth time in seven weeks, and that makes it tough,” McCarty added. “My hat is off to my players, because they haven’t quit. They see the big picture, and I see the same things that they see. Right now, all that matters is that every week and every play we try to move forward.”