GREENVILLE — East Carolina has come full circle in the Greenville Regional.

After being relegated to a series of must-win games with a 4-1 loss to fourth-seeded Evansville on Friday, the top-seeded Pirates will battle the Purple Aces for the regional championship on Monday at 12:06 p.m.

ECU (46-16) got its bats going for a 10-7 win over Virginia Commonwealth before hammering Evansville, 19-6, to force the winner take all matchup on Monday.

The Pirates will need to keep their offense rolling for a pitching staff thinned by four games in three days.

Monday’s winner will head to Knoxville for a best of three with Tennessee, the No. 1 national seed.

In the afternoon conquest of the Rams (38-23), Aaron Groller started and turned in three scoreless innings during which ECU built a 4-0 lead The Pirates went ahead to stay on a run-scoring double by Ryan McCrystal down the right field line in the top of the first.

Danny Beal (8-2) pitched the last five innings against VCU.

Carter Cunningham had a solo homer in the fourth and Jacob Jenkins-Cowart connected for a 2-run shot in the seventh.

McCrystal also gave ECU a lead it would maintain the rest of the way with a 2-run homer in the top of the first in Sunday’s second game. Carter Cunningham had a 2-eun homer in the second. Luke Nowak hit a 2-run homer in the third for a 6-2 lead.

Jacob Starling hit a 3-run homer to cap a 7-run ninth inning for the Pirates.

McCrystal had five RBIs in the rematch with the Aces and Nowak drove in four. Cunningham and Starling each had three RBIs.

Freshman left-hander Ethan Norby (4-0) started and went five and one-third innings with nine strikeouts. Jaden Winter went the last two frames.