Pitching coach Dan Roszel (5th year) | Home stadium Clark–LeClair Stadium | |
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Conference American Athletic Conference 2015 record 40–22 (15–9 The American) Head coach Cliff Godwin (1st year) Assistant coach Jeff Palumbo (1st year) | ||
The 2015 East Carolina Pirates baseball team represents East Carolina University during the 2015 NCAA Division I baseball season. The Pirates play their home games at Clark–LeClair Stadium as a member of the American Athletic Conference. They are led by head coach Cliff Godwin, in his first season at East Carolina.
Contents
Previous Season
In 2014, the Pirates finished the season 7th in Conference USA with a record of 33–26, 16–14 in conference play. They qualified for the 2014 Conference USA Baseball Tournament, losing in the second round, but failed to qualify for the 2014 NCAA Division I Baseball Tournament.
February
The Pirates opened their season on February 13 against Virginia, as part of a home-and-home series. The Pirates traveled to Charlottesville, Virginia in 2014, and were swept in a three-game series. Once again, the Cavaliers swept the Pirates, this time over the first weekend of the 2015 season. The Pirates struggled offensively, and scored just five runs over the entire series. Josh Sborz collected two saves for Virginia. The following Wednesday, the Pirates were scheduled to visit Old Dominion, but bad weather caused a postponement until April. The following week, the Pirates' home game against the Monarchs on the 25th was also pushed until March 4.
On the second weekend of the season, weather related issues caused a shakeup to the schedule of the annual Keith LeClair Classic hosted by ECU. All Friday games were cancelled, and Michigan, who was originally scheduled to participate (along with Liberty and St. John's), was replaced by UNC Greensboro. East Carolina went 1–2 on the weekend, defeating St. John's and UNC Greensboro, but falling to Liberty, to win the classic for the third consecutive year.
The Pirates closed the month of February (and opened the month of March in the finale) with a three-game series against Albany. Originally, ECU was scheduled to play in the annual Irish Classic in Cary, North Carolina, but it was cancelled due to weather. The Pirates swept the Great Danes over the three game series, outscoring them by a cumulative score of 24–7.
March
In the Pirates' first midweek game of March, they traveled to rival NC State and lost by a score of 0–7, extending their losing streak against the Wolfpack in Raleigh to five games. The following day, the Pirates returned home and hosted Old Dominion in the makeup game of a February 25 postponement. In their 9–7 win, East Carolina broke a 5–5 deadlock with two runs in both the seventh and eight innings, and despite allowing a run in both the eight and ninth innings, held on for their sixth victory of the season.
In their first weekend series in March, the Pirates hosted Monmouth. After the game scheduled for Friday, March 6 was pushed back to Saturday, March 7, as part of a doubleheader, ECU swept the doubleheader against the Hawks, shutting out Monmouth in both games. In the first game of the doubleheader, a 2–0 victory, Evan Kruczynski threw a complete game, two hit shutout. In the second game of the doubleheader, the Pirates scored six runs in the first inning to coast to a 9–0 win. ECU completed the sweep with a 3–2 win on Sunday.
In the second week of March, the Pirates opened with a pair of midweek games. They lost the first game to Campbell 4–9, before rebounding to defeat UNC Greensboro, 8–1. It was the Pirates' second win over UNC Greensboro on the season, after having defeated them on February 21. Over the weekend of March 13, the Pirates traveled to Elon, North Carolina, to play a three-game series with Elon. For the second straight weekend, the Pirates picked up a three-game sweep, after sweeping Monmouth the previous weekend. East Carolina scored 41 runs in the series.
The Pirates hosted Princeton, out of the Ivy League, for a two-game midweek series from March 17–18. The Pirates swept the Tigers over the two game series to improve their record on the season to 15–6 and extended their winning streak to six games. Following the midweek series against the Tigers, ECU hosted VCU, a traditional midweek opponent, for a three-game weekend series. The Pirates dropped both the first and last games of the series, dropping their first weekend series since opening weekend against Virginia.
Schedule
All rankings from Collegiate Baseball.