ECU Cages Bearcats 13-6 With Five Home Runs and 14 Hits
(10)East Carolina got back on track with a convincing 13-6 game two victory over Cincinnati Saturday evening in Clark-LeClair Stadium.
The Pirates had 14 hits and five home runs in the contest and basically knocked the cover off the baseball all afternoon and into the early evening. Spencer Brickhouse had a pair of homers and six RBI to go along with home runs from Bryant Packard, Connor Litton and ever improving Turner Brown even got into the act with a bomb to right field in the seventh.
"It's always good to get things going in a game like this after a tough loss yesterday. It's good to come out and get the bats rolling," Brickhouse said afterward, "They're a good team, they've got good pitching and it's good to get the game going strong. That way we can give our pitchers a little relaxation as they go up on the mound. It's always good to get a win like this when it's lot less stressful than the game last night."
A pair of early ECU homers from Bryant Packard, who kept his hitting streak going at 27 games, with a solo shot in the first inning and Spencer Brickhouse’s three run dinger in the third quickly had ECU(36-13/12-8 AAC) up 4-0.
Alec Burleson yielded five hits and four runs with five strikeouts in five and two-thirds innings to pick up the victory for ECU. Burleson improved to 4-1 for the season while Nathan Kroger fell to 1-4 giving up six earned runs including four home runs in five innings of work for Cincinnati.
"We talk about having rebound innings when another team scores and we answer back it kind of knocks the momentum out of themselves," ECU head coach Cliff Godwin said, "Obviously they scored four and you'd like to get a couple but to score four, that was huge for us."
Trey Haberkorn got the Bearcats on the scoreboard to cut the lead to three with a base hit to first base bringing Cole Murphy home from second base.
Back to back homers from Brickhouse who homered for the second time in the game and Connor Litton in the bottom of the fifth inning to made it 6-1.
A.J. Bumpass got Cincinnati(26-23/11-9 AAC) on the scoreboard again in the sixth when his sac fly to left brought Kyle Mottice across home plate. Then Cole Murphy then added a three run homer to right that cut the ECU lead to just one at 5-4.
But ECU wasn’t through yet offensively. In the bottom of the sixth, Turner Brown’s base hit to right scored a run. Packard singled to left to score a run. Brickhouse sac flied to center to score another run and a Connor Litton ground out to the pitcher to bring home another ECU run. That put ECU up 10-5.
In the top of the seventh McVey’s base hit to centerfield brought in a Cincinnati run to make it 10-6.
Turner Brown continued his resurgence at the plate with a two-run homer to right in the bottoms of the seventh frame to put ECU up by a touchdown at 12-6. Then in the bottom of the eighth Brickhouse was at it again when his double to right field added the extra point to make it 13-6.
