Wilmington Pounds (9)ECU 10-2
UNC-Wilmington came in fired up and made easy work of ECU in a 10-2 win Wednesday night at Brooks Field.
With the loss, ECU falls to 13-3 and snapped their seven game win streak while Wilmington that produced 17 hits for the evening, improves to 11-3 for their fifth straight victory.
Seahawk Jacob Shafer(1-0) lasted five innings with two strikeouts and yielding a pair of runs to grab the win for Wilmington that snapped ECU’s seven game win streak.
Brooks Baldwin went 4 for 4 in the victory for Wilmington.
The Pirates went through a total of eight pitchers Wednesday night with starter Nate Nabholz(0-1) taking the loss after giving up a pair of hits and two early runs and lasting just a third of an inning on what turned into largely a staff day on the mound.
The Pirates did not waste much time getting on the scoreboard first when Thomas Francisco’s base hit to left scored the first run of the game. That was followed by a Josh Moylan grounded into a double-play but also scored a run when Bryson Worrell scampered home for a 2-0 ECU lead.
Things went downhill from there for the 9th ranked Pirates that produced just five hits all evening.
UNC-Wilmington answered in a long bottom of the first inning when a Cole Weiss single and a Matt Suggs RBI double quickly produced a pair of runs. Then in the second inning the Seahawks took their first lead of the game on a Taber Mongero RBI to centerfield and a Jac Croom hit to second that scored Mongero for a 4-2 lead.
Jac Croom’s RBI base hit to right center and a two-run Kip Brandenburg homer in the same frame stretched the Wilmington lead to five runs in the fifth inning. Then to make matters worse Dillon Lifrieri’s single to left tacked on another run to make it 8-2.
Croom grounded into a double-play in the sixth inning with Mongero in scoring position and that added another UNC-W run to put the Seahawks up by a touchdown.
Matt Suggs’ second double of the night gave Wilmington their fifteenth hit of the evening and led to a Trevor Marsh soft line drive to right that scored UNC-W’s final run of the contest in a 10-2 ballgame.
East Carolina returns to the diamond Friday night when Illinois State rolls into Greenville for the first of a three-game set scheduled for 6:30 p.m.
