AAC Regular Season Title On The Line When ECU Travels To USF
East Carolina hits the road this week to take on South Florida in the Pirates’ last conference series of the season at USF Baseball Stadium in Tampa.
The Bulls come in at 22-24 overall and 12-12 in American Athletic Conference play. They are 12-10 overall at home and are fresh off of a trip to Wichita State where they won two of four games last weekend in Wichita.
South Florida has won five of their last seven contests including winning three of four the prior weekend at Memphis.
Bryan Cavanaugh leads the team with a .382 batting average with seven homers and twelve doubles. Drew Costanzo with 11 home runs and eight doubles is also dangerous with the bat. The majority of USF’s starters are batting at .300 or better.
Pirate head coach Cliff Godwin said Josh Moylan tweaked a hamstring on Friday and Godwin didn’t think he would be able to go on Saturday but he is able to DH and also has the option to play at first base defensively.
Godwin then talked about this what to expect on the mound from ECU.
“Gavin Williams, Carson Whisenhunt and Tyler Smith will pitch at some point in time,” said Godwin, “After that I’ve got no idea. We’re going to figure it out on the fly and see how guys feel.”
“We’re going down there to win. We’re not going down there to throw off. We’re playing for something,” said Godwin, “I just don’t know how it’s going to stack up right now. We’re going to continue to see how the bullpens feel and all that good stuff.”
The Pirates come in ranked 10th this week nationally hoping to lock up a home NCAA regional after being listed last week as one of the 16 possible venues.
ECU checks in at 36-11 overall this season including 18-6 in conference play having just won three of four games in Cincinnati at UC Baseball Stadium. The most recent was a 5-2 win on Sunday.
At this point of the season, all of these teams are physically worn down and with four game weekends due to Covid-19, it’s no different for the Pirates.
“It’s a lot different. Trying to maneuver through it. When we play one game in the conference tournament it’s going to feel like we’re at recess because of these four game weekends,” Godwin told PirateIllustrated.com, “It’s worn on everybody as the season keeps going on and the last couple it just seems like you’re out there for twenty hours when you’re out there for that double-header. Everybody’s trying to win but when you’re fighting for first place I think there’s more stress in it than other teams than what Tulane and us are having to go through.”
“Of course everybody is trying to beat us and every pitch is the difference between winning and losing a game. All the games were close at Cincinnati. Playing a team eight times, to win seven out of eight is pretty good.”
“Going into this week we are a half a game in first place. We control our own destiny. That’s all you can ask for going into the last weekend. Of course we’ll need to play well at South Florida to be able to hold on to this thing. We’ve taken the past two days pretty much off. Guys have lifted weights but they were cashed so we won’t practice again as a team until we get on the plane and head to South Florida. We’ll practice at South Florida tomorrow night.”
This week’s American Athletic Conference series begins on Thursday at 2 o’clock with a double-header followed by a 3 pm Friday matchup before closing out the weekend on Saturday with a 1 o’clock scheduled first pitch in Tampa.
Catch Coach Godwin's weekly press conference video below and stay tuned for the latest as coverage of ECU - USF continues here on PirateIllustrated.com.
