GREENVILLE — East Carolina swept an American Athletic Conference series with Rice to win its fifth straight regular-season championship in the league.

The teams played a doubleheader Friday with ECU winning, 15-5, in eight innings in the first game before rallying for a 6-4 triumph in the nightcap.

The Pirates (40-13, 19-8 AAC) will open play in the AAC Tournament on Tuesday as the No. 1 seed at BayCare Ballpark in Clearwater, FL. ECU is scheduled to take on the No. 8 seed 45 minutes after the completion of the event’s 9 a.m. opener.

The Pirates won the first game of the series with Rice on Thursday night, 8-2.

Jacob Jenkins-Cowart was the driving force offensively in the first game Friday as he went 4-for-4 with two home runs, a double and six RBIs.

Justin Wilcoxen had two hits with a homer and three RBIs,

Jackson DiLorenzo (2-2) got the win in relief.

Carter Cunningham’s 2-run homer gave the Pirates a 2-0 lead in the first inning of the second game.

Carter Cunningham had a run-scoring double for ECU in the second inning.

ECU trailed, 4-3, when Ryan McCrystal had a score-tying RBI single in the sixth inning. Jenkins;-Cowart had a 2-run single in the sixth to put ECU ahead to stay.

The sixth inning started with a pair of ground outs before Ryley Johnson, Cunningham, McCrystal and Jacob Starling had consecutive singles.

Starter Aaron Grollier was charged with the damage in a four-run surge in the second inning by the Owls (22-36, 11-16) before Chris Kahler and Danny Bear shut down the visitors the rest of the way.

Kahler contributed three perfect innings with five strikeouts.

Beal (6-2) yielded two hits, no runs and no walks with six strikeouts.