GREENVILLE, N.C. - The 2011 season is close at hand and it was Media Day at East Carolina on Wednesday.

The Pirates face another competitive schedule in just a little over three weeks with series against Virginia, Pepperdine, Rutgers and Delaware State. North Carolina, Elon, N.C. State and UNC-Wilmington also find their way onto this year's Pirate baseball docket.

Monmouth, Rutgers and Liberty University highlight this year's Keith LeClair Classic where the Pirates will host Monmouth in the first day's second game on March 11.

ECU opens up against with a three game set against Youngstown State on February 18th.

Asked who Godwin feels is the Pirates' biggest opponent on the slate this year, he had a surprising answer.

"Our biggest opponent is ourselves, the team who wins, usually the other team did something to make that occur," said ECU skipper Billy Godwin, "So our biggest opponent is ourselves."

The Pirates return 21 lettermen(13 pitchers and 8 positional players) from 2010's team that went 32-27 for the season.

Conference USA's Pitcher of the Year, Seth Maness is back along with Newcomer of the Year Zach Woods and 2009 freshman All American Kevin Brandt.

Closer Seth Simmons is onboard along with Trent Whitehead, Corey Thompson and Johnny Bench award nominee Zach Wright. Last year Wright hit an ECU record three grand slams and a team best 14 home runs.

The Pirates were 18th in America in strike outs per nine innings. They were 86th in batting average at .315 but ranked 32nd nationally in home runs with 81.

PirateIllustrated.com caught up with Coach Godwin and this year's team of experienced Pirates in PI-TV interviews conducted at the team office for media day.

Catch player interviews with Trent Whitehead, Seth Maness, Austin Chrisman, Seth Simmons as well as preseason words from assistant coaches Jesse Lancaster, Nich Schnabel and Dan Roszel in this PI-TV preseason special.