4/20/2018 baseball Edit

ECU Looks Solid in 5-1 Friday Night Victory Over Memphis

Mark Lindsay • PirateIllustrated

Publisher

(11)ECU picked up a game one 5-1 Friday night win over Memphis at FedEx Park in Memphis.

Dwanya Williams-Sutton had three hits and Connor Litton had a pair of hits and an RBI to lead the ECU attack. Jake Washer and Bryant Packard also added RBI’s for the Pirates who improved to 28-9 and 6-4 in AAC play.

Friday night starting pitcher Chris Holba remained undefeated at 9-0 with the victory for the Pirates. Holba went a career high 104 pitches and a career tying seven and a third innings in the win.

Holba yielded just seven hits and one run before Davis Kirkpatrick came on in relief for the Pirates to throw for two thirds of an inning. Then Zack Barnes pitched the last inning to shut the door for ECU.

“I thought Chris Holba pitched very well tonight for us as did Davis and Zach. Offensively I thought we were very average to be honest," said ECU head coach Cliff Godwin, "We did enough to score some runs on getting big two-out RBI hits by Washer and Packard along with Brady Lloyd’s aggressive base running that gave us a run."

"Just thought we were okay offensively with a lot of soft contact and don’t know if we were as focused as we needed to be, but we did enough to win.”

The two teams remained scoreless until the fourth inning when Spencer Brockhouse scored on a wild pitch from Tiger pitcher Alex Hicks who lasted seven and two thirds innings Friday night before taking the loss to drop to 2-7 for Memphis(13-26/1-9).

In the bottom of the fourth, Colton Neel scored for Memphis on a Nick Vaage single up the middle to tie the contest at 1-1.

Then in the bottom of the fifth, ECU lead grew to 4-1 on a pair of RBI from Jake Washer and Connor Litton.

ECU’s lead expanded to 5-1 when Bryant Packard’s base hit in the top of the eighth inning brought Dwanya Williams-Sutton home from third base to score a run.

The two teams continue their weekend series with a 2 pm EDT start time on Saturday followed by game three which is scheduled for aproximately 45 minutes after the conclusion of game two.