Jake Washer delivered two home runs while Bryant Packard and Bryson Worrell added one apiece to highlight ECU’s 13-3 win over Quinnipiac in the elimination game of the Greenville NCAA baseball regional late Sunday evening.
ECU(45-16) put together a 19 hit attack while limiting a no doubt exhausted Quinnipiac team to nine hits. The Bobcats basically had to play two games in a row with just a few minutes in between games after narrowly losing to Campbell earlier in the evening.
Ryder Giles officially picked up his first win of the year after coming on as one of five ECU pitchers who worked in relief of Tyler Smith. Arthur Correira (3-4) absorbed the loss for a Quinnipiac squad that put on a good show all weekend.
“I want to say that Quinnipiac did a unbelievable job coming into a very hostile environment last night, beating us in game one and they had a great season,” said ECU head coach Cliff Godwin, “They competed their tails off and I told their coach they have nothing to hang their heads about.”
“I’m really proud of our kids. Obviously a long day for us. I told them afterward there will be time to be tired in the offseason. We’ll sleep quick tonight and get up and we’re promised one game tomorrow, so we’ll worry about winning the first pitch tomorrow and we'll be ready to go.”
Jake Washer’s sixth homer in the last couple of weeks gave ECU a 1-0 lead in the first inning. it was the eighth of the year allowed by Quinnipiac pitcher Arthur Correira.
Quinnipiac(30-29) evened the score at one apiece when Kevin Huscher scampered home on a Tyler Smith wild pitch.
ECU’s second homer of the night came on a Bryant Packard bomb to right that scored two runs to give the Pirates a 3-1 lead in the top of the third. That was followed by Jake Washer’s second homer of the day on a blast down the left field line and into the jungle. That added two more ECU runs to give the Pirates a 5-1 lead.
The Bobcats scored a run in the bottom of the fourth before ECU scored eight more runs, highlighted by Worrell’s homer in the sixth and a four run seventh inning that put the game out of reach.
ECU will face Campbell in what amounts to an elimination game for the Pirates. If they can win the first game that would give Campbell their first loss of the tournament and force a second game for the Greenville regional title.
Game one is at 1 o’clock on Monday. Stay tuned to PirateIllustrated.com for continuing coverage of the Greenville regional and catch ECU’s post game press conference audio below.
