Sophomore left-hander Ethan Norby will return to a Friday night starting role as East Carolina plays an American Athletic Conference series at Wichita State this weekend.

Norby, 5-4 with a 3.67 earned run average, has been used in a relief role recently.

Norby made two appearances out of the bullpen last weekend against Tulane, including six scoreless innings with eight strikeouts for the win in a 15-5 triumph in eight innings over the Green Wave on Saturday.

“Norby is a swing guy and we wanted to get him back in the bullpen just to take some pressure off of him and for him to get the competitive juices flowing again,” said Pirates coach Cliff Godwin on Wednesday. “You could see on Saturday — once he got rolling, man, it was awesome.”

Godwin has not announced starters for games two and three this weekend.

“We are just trying to take it game by game,” he said. “Depending on the matchups and who’s the freshest, that’s who we’re going to start.”

Mound staff diminished

ECU is 26-19 overall and 10-8 in the AAC with a pitching staff reduced by  injuries.

The situation was compounded when the Friday night starter against the Green Wave, Oklahoma transfer Brad Pruett, lasted just two-thirds of an inning.

“We have twenty-plus pitchers on our roster, but we right now only have 13 pitchers that are considered healthy and one of those being Colby Wallace (third baseman),” Godwin said. “We’re obviously not deep on the mound. So when you go out there and you give up nine runs in the first inning and you have to go to the bullpen in game one of a weekend series, of course that’s going to strain your pitching staff.”

The visitors led, 20-0, through five innings in the series opener.

“But it also allowed guys that get out there that have not had a lot of opportunities and Tulane was definitely rolling and they scored 20 runs,” Godwin said. “As I told our team, there’s no difference than losing 3-2 or 20-5. Fans feel terrible about it, and yeah, it’s not fun, but at the end of the day, it’s a loss.

“Our guys did a good job responding the next day.”

Trio limits Elon

Effective pitching was the predominant factor in a 4-2 nonconference win at Elon on Tuesday night. Bradley  Zayac, Jackson DiLorenzo and Pruett combined to limit the Phoenix to four hits with 11 strikeouts.

“Bradley Zayac was really good on the mound,” Godwin said. “Thought De Lorenzo was really good on the mound. I think that might’ve been his longest outing of the year. Then Pruitt was really good for two innings.

“Offensively we did enough. I thought Colby Wallace played great defense at third base. We won the game. I would not say it was one of the best games that we’ve played all year, but we won the game on the road and we got back last night.

“We’ll practice (Wednesday) and we’re going up to Raleigh (Wednesday night) because our flight is so early out of Raleigh on Thursday morning to go to Wichita.”

Conference power shift

ECU was the preseason favorite to win its sixth straight regular season championship in the AAC, despite 27 new players, but the Pirates are five games behind Texas-San Antonio (15-3).

South Florida is three games back at 12-6. The AAC has become more balanced in baseball.

“The new coach at South Florida (Mitch Hannahs) has done a good job,” Godwin said.  “UTSA is really good, as they were good last year.”

ECU hosts UTSA (May 9-11) and USF comes to Greenville, May 15-17, to conclude the regular season.”

Injury factor

A lot of ECU’s younger players have been forced to step up.

“We are not as good as we’ve been in the past, not right now anyway,” Godwin said. “We have had more injuries this year than probably any team that we’ve ever had here. So when you have two weekend rotation arms that haven’t thrown a pitch this year. …

“I don’t know if it’s ever going to be easy when your center fielder (Ryley Johnson) who won the gold glove award has played really one full game all year. I guess two counting Sunday. It just makes things different.

“Braxton Tramel (infielder) gets hurt and I don’t know if he’ll be able to play any more this year with basically a broken shoulder. It’s put a lot of people out there in situations that they’re just not ready for.

“That doesn’t mean that we can’t win baseball games, but at the end of the day, they’ve had to grow up probably quicker than they anticipated.”

Changes in college athletics

Immediate eligibility for transfers and the influence of NIL money in attracting players has changed college athletics to the point that annual roster rebuilds are commonplace.

Not at East Carolina.

“That’s not the way we do it,” Godwin said. “I’m sure there are people critical of me and the way we run our program but I don’t really care. Our track record speaks for itself.

“We have a lot of players that are injured that are older. So that’s why we have so much youth out there right now, which is going to benefit us for next year because they have gotten a lot of playing time this year and they have been through the fire, so to speak, which will help them down the road.

“We’ve had some older players get hurt, so it’s just forced some young guys to be out there. They’re talented, but they’ve let the outside world tell them that they’re young and everything else.”

Advent of social media

Godwin says social media tends to affect players’ self perception.

“It is definitely difficult to navigate from a perspective of we didn’t have social media when I played, so if you played bad, you didn’t have people being critical of you, Godwin said. “… The players get on it. So they see it as much as I try to educate them, ‘Hey man, if you believe it when it’s good, you’re going to believe it when it’s bad.’ But that’s just the world they’re in.”

Godwin’s playing days

Godwin played catcher for the Pirates and was an academic All American during his college career from 1998 to 2001.

He never considered transferring.

“Did not because my dad (Lewis) would’ve not let me,” Godwin said. “My parents wouldn’t have let me. The only way I would’ve left here was if Coach (Keith) LeClair would’ve told me to leave. I understand that that’s not the world we’re in now, but that’s the way my parents raised me.”

There was miniscule transfer activity at that time.

“We had junior college transfers, but there was never a four-year transfer while I played here that was an immediate star player,” Godwin said.

Dixon Williams

D.H. Conley product Dixon Williams had three 3-run homers in the Tulane series. The junior second baseman is hitting .303 with 10 homers and 35 RBIs.

“Dixon’s done a really good job,” Godwin said. “He’s been pitched really tough all year and has really starting to heat up. He’s worked hard. I’m just glad to see him get some pitches that he could drive this past weekend.

“He’s been pitched really tough because he’s the one guy that’s in our lineup that everybody knows about that was on last year’s team. So no matter if he was in the lead off, two, five, it didn’t matter where you put him in the lineup.

“He and I have had those conversations a lot. But he is starting to see the ball better and he got some pitches to drive this weekend and really swung the bat well for us this weekend and last night.”

Ryley Johnson

The center fielder has to play his way back into shape after missing most of the current season to date.

He was the leading returning hitter with a .339 average in 2024. He has been out with an abdominal strain after offseason shoulder surgery.

“we haven’t had him at all, to be honest,” Godwin said. “Saturday he was fresh. It was probably a blessing in disguise that we were able to get him out of the game in the fourth or fifth inning on Friday, just not to have him on his feet.

“He’s going from not being on his feet a whole lot, from running and just playing baseball, because we’ve had to get him healthy and now he’s going. and yeah, we’re trying to manage it, but Riley wants to go.

“Sunday, you could tell he just wasn’t 100 per cent, but he still wanted to be out there. (Tuesday) night, we played in the last two innings. And hopefully he’ll be able to go at least a couple of times this weekend. … He changes our team dynamic and just brings a lot of confidence to our team.”

Competitive range

When playing well, ECU has been good enough to take two of three from UNC Wilmington, a 6-3 winner at N.C. State on Tuesday.

Then there nights like the opener of the Tulane series.

“We’re good enough to beat anybody in the country when we’re clicking on all the cylinders,” Godwin said. “And when we’re not, we can lose to anybody in the country.

“So that’s the goal. And look, we’re trying to play our best baseball in May. Heading into the conference tournament. And as I told them, we just got to get some momentum and start rolling and start feeling it a little bit.”

League tournament

The AAC Tournament will feature the top eight teams in the standings in a double-elimination format in Clearwater, FL, beginning May 20.

Wichita State (13-30, 5-13 AAC) is the immediate challenge.

“We can’t take anybody lightly,” Godwin said. “No, we do not take anybody lightly. We need to worry about playing good baseball in all three phases — pitching, offensively and defensively.”