(9)East Carolina picked up a weekend sweep of Illinois State on Sunday with an 11-8 win behind home runs from Bryson Worrell and Seth Caddell and solid hitting from the Pirates.
Pirate starter Carson Wisenhunt(4-0) had five strikeouts and gave up five hits and four earned runs in his five innings of work for East Carolina on Sunday to pick up the win. Carter Spivey, C.J. Mayhue and Matt Bridges all came on in relief and Mayhue picked up the save for ECU with four strikeouts, giving up just a pair of hits in three innings of work.
The Redbirds tried to make a game out of it and gave the Pirates a bit of a scare when they cut a big four run ECU lead to just one run at 9-8 in the sixth inning.
“Offensively I thought we did a good job of sticking to our approach and one through nine just being relentless," Godwin stated.
Sean Sinisko(1-3) took the loss, lasting just four innings after giving up nine runs, five of them earned on eight hits with one strikeout for (5-12)Illinois State.
The two teams had already scored seven runs by the end of the first inning with East Carolina(16-3) taking a 4-3 lead when Bryson Worrell reached on a throwing error with two men on that scored a pair of Pirate runs along with Josh Moylan’s double that scored two more runs. The Redbirds answered with a pair of RBI base hits from Jack Butler and Ryan Cermak.
Thomas Francisco’s RBI hit up the middle scored the Pirates’ fifth run of the game to make it 5-3 in the bottom of the second inning.
Then Worrell was at it again in the third when he homered to left to put ECU up by a field goal. One inning later Seth Caddell added to the barrage with a three-run shot to left field to extend the ECU lead to 9-3. It was Caddell’s eighth homer of the season.
“It’s important. When he hit it you thought it was great. It gave us another three runs, but him putting the ball in play in his last at-bat too with two outs allowed us to score another run and got A-Mac to the plate and then A-Mac drove him in and it extended the inning,” said Godwin.
“Seth’s approach mentally, he has matured so much over three years and now he’s able to articulate what he’s seeing behind the plate, the umpire zone, talk to the pitchers, talk to the hitters and that’s the biggest thing.”
“I thought we did a really good job,” said Caddell, “We stuck to the plan. If you didn’t get a pitch you wanted, just take it and get to the next one because you know that pitch you wanted is going to come. Just staying tough with our approach.”
Illinois State wasn’t quite done when they scored another run in the top of the fifth on an Aidan Higgins RBI base hit to centerfield that cut the ECU lead to 9-4.
Then in the sixth, the Redbirds tried to make a game out of it, scoring four times on a Jeremy Gaines RBI base hit, Kyle Soberano’s grounder with the bases loaded, a throwing error from Caddell on a called third strike that allowed a runner to score and a Jordan Libman run scoring single to right that suddenly cut the Pirate lead to 9-8.
“We got out to an early lead but Carter Spivey came in and pitched well and everybody who came in pitched well. It was just one of those things. They get contact and we make an error behind them and it kind of spiraled out of control,” said Cliff Godwin who was pleased with both Bridges and Mayhue's performance on Sunday.
“Bridgy did his job and then Mayhue came in and once he came in I thought it was lights out. The thing with Mayhue is he cares so much, he’s such a competitor,” Godwin said, “He came in on Friday night and he tried to do more and he doesn’t need to do more, just execute one more pitch. He was lights out today. I thought his stuff was really good. His slider was better and his fast ball command was impressive.”
RBI doubles in the bottom of the sixth from Caddell and Makarewicz extended the ECU lead back to a field goal at 11-8 which proved to be the final margin of victory.
East Carolina has won ten of their last eleven games including three straight as they head to Chapel Hill on Tuesday to take on North Carolina at 6 o’clock.