ECU Baseball Coach Cliff Godwin (ECU Media Relations photo)

FOOTBALL RECRUITING Ruff adds another 'son' to the family Inspired by a father-figure type mentor as a high school football player, Justin Sandifer was hoping to find someone similar to help guide his college career. Sandifer believes he found that person in East Carolina coach Ruffin McNeill. ... More from Sammy Batten... Thumbnails: ECU's recruiting class of 2015...

BASKETBALL Memphis holds off ECU rally MEMPHIS — East Carolina fell behind 24-9 in its American Athletic Conference contest at Memphis on Wednesday night and absorbed a 70-58 loss after pulling within 62-58 with 3:50 remaining. The Pirates were 13 for 27 behind the 3-point arc (48.1 percent) in falling to 8-12 overall and 1-6 in league play. ... More...  Next: ECU vs. Cincinnati | Sunday, 1 pm  | TV: CBSSN | The Season |

BASKETBALL On the cusp of the winning formula Jeff Lebo's teams always play their best basketball at the end of the season. Perhaps we saw a glimpse of that on Saturday. Tulsa came to town and got all it wanted from East Carolina before slipping out of town with a 66-64 win. ... More from Brian Bailey... Audio: Brian Bailey Show The Brian Bailey Show airs on Pirate Radio 1250 on Mondays at 6:30 p.m. Brian's topic this week was baseball and his guests were Rose High coach Ronald Vincent, Babe Ruth League president Clay Medlin and Hot Stove League president Chuck Humphrey: Replay show...

BASKETBALL Pirates close with win It was good to see Shane Carden smile at the end of the Senior Bowl on the NFL Channel on Saturday. It was a good memory to close his college career. The East Carolina quarterback took a knee in the final seconds of a 34-13 win for the North team. ... More from Al Myatt...

BASKETBALL Pirates just short against Tulsa GREENVILLE — Tulsa remained unbeaten in the American Athletic Conference but not without a battle against East Carolina in Williams Arena at Minges Coliseum on Saturday. The Golden Hurricane improved to 14-5 overall and 7-0 in league play as De'Andre Wright assured the outcome by hitting two free throws with three seconds left. ... More...

BASKETBALL Mustangs turn back ECU DALLAS — Five Southern Methodist players scored in double figures as the host Mustangs took a 77-54 American Athletic Conference win over East Carolina on Saturday afternoon. Terry Whisnant of the Pirates scored 24 points and teammate Caleb White added 14 but it was not enough to offset the balanced effort by SMU. ... More...

FOOTBALL RECRUITING Great Scott! 4-star RB set to enroll The second time around seems to have been a charm for the East Carolina Pirates when it comes to Derrell Scott. ECU was one of the first schools to offer a scholarship not long after Scott's 2011 sophomore season ... More from Sammy Batten... Thumbnails: ECU's recruiting class of 2015...

BASKETBALL ECU makes history against Cougs GREENVILLE — East Carolina and Houston came into Wednesday night's matchup with winless records in the American Athletic Conference but the Pirates emerged with a 66-61 victory, their first league triumph since moving to the AAC this season. "That was a big win for our kids," ECU coach Jeff Lebo said. ... Story & photos... Post-game Audio: Lebo, Tyson & Whisnant... Pictured: ECU's Antonio Robinson scores a layup against Houston. The senior guard had 8 points and was a perfect 3-3 from the floor with 4 assists. (Photo by W.A. Myatt.)

By Al Myatt
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Players begin at home plate offensively in baseball and the objective is to get around the bases. The goal is to get back home and that describes the journey of Cliff Godwin, East Carolina's first-year baseball coach, who has returned to his alma mater after more than a decade learning his trade as a college assistant. A former catcher for the Pirates, Godwin was seldom far from home as a player.

Now that he's back home, he brings an accumulation of experience for developing a highly-successful program.

Godwin grew up a figurative fungo from the ECU campus in Snow Hill. His youth there as the son of a coach unquestionably helped define him.

The sum of his background as a native son of the region, his career as a Pirates player and his travels as an assistant have reaffirmed his vision for the program he was entrusted to lead last June.

That vision hasn't changed significantly since Godwin and teammates were playing Tennessee in a Super Regional of the NCAA Tournament under the late Keith LeClair at Kinston's Grainger Stadium in 2001.

Godwin was born just blocks away from the venerable old minor league park, 37 years ago Monday.

"My dad (Lewis) was a high school basketball coach (Greene Central)," Godwin said. "I had some sort of ball in my hand from as early as I could walk. My earliest memories were going to basketball practice with my dad. From an athletic standpoint, that's where I started. I was in Greene Central's gym. He'd take me to practice and I wanted to be there. ... I'd chase the ball around as early as I could walk. I sat on the bench during games and interacted with the players. They were my role models. As I grew a little bit older, I obviously started playing little league baseball. We didn't have tackle football but I was playing flag football in Snow Hill. Once I got to middle school, it was tackle football, baseball and basketball year round. I didn't know anything other but to play sports."

"My dad was a coach. He wanted me to work hard and be the best at whatever I was doing, whatever sport it was. He was actually a college baseball player at UNC-Pembroke. He was a very competitive person. I think a lot of my competitiveness came from him. ... He had sports in his blood, too.

Lewis Godwin was a no-nonsense coach.

"He was a disciplinarian, a guy who believed in hard work and doing things the right way," Cliff Godwin said. "Old school. Nothing irritated him more than for somebody to go up for a dunk and miss a dunk when they could have laid the ball up. If you wanted to get on his bad side as a basketball player, go up and miss a dunk when you could have laid it up and got two points. That was one of his biggest pet peeves."

Basketball was probably Godwin's primary sport well into high school.

"I had some other opportunities to play basketball and football in college," Godwin said. "Appalachian State, Western Carolina, UNCG (for basketball). I could have walked on to play football at N.C. State. Baseball, a lot of people just didn't have confidence in me. I had an opportunity to walk on at North Carolina, walk on at UNC-Wilmington. There weren't a lot of people other than (Greene Central) coach (Rabbit) Fulghum and (former ECU coach) Gary Overton that felt if I really focused on it, I could be a good baseball player.

"It was one of those things where I just wanted to play sports. If you had asked me my junior year in high school, it was definitely basketball. I almost didn't play football my senior year because I wanted to concentrate on basketball and become a better basketball player. One of the best early decisions in my life was to play football. I think it was the best record in Greene Central football history. I was player of the year in the conference and we just had a great year. We lost the first game of the season to West Craven. We lost the last game we played to Clinton in the second round of the playoffs. It was a really good run."

Size was a factor in Godwin's college choice.

"I was six-foot," he said. "I was a shooting guard. Too short to be a shooting guard at a major Division I school and too slow to play point guard at a major Division I school. That was kind of the basketball deal and kind of the same thing with quarterback. People wanted a 6-foot-3 quarterback who could see over the line and I was six-foot.

"Coach Fulghum really just pushed people on me. I can remember Todd Wilkinson coming from UNCW watching practice and Coach Fulghum just trying to get me an opportunity to play baseball somewhere. Coach O deserves a lot of credit because he took a chance on me. Once East Carolina offered, it was the biggest school where I could get a good education. I was a good student. With my parents and Coach Fulghum, once that offer was on the table, they didn't tell me where to go but they kind of encouraged me to go to East Carolina because it was a four-year school. They really kind of steered me away from junior college. They wanted me to get a good education."

Godwin went from the mound to behind the plate as his high school career evolved.

"My junior year I pitched and played left field," he said. "My sophomore year, I just caught and pitched some. My senior year I caught. I wasn't a great catcher defensively but it was one of those things where I felt like the best opportunity for me to play at a high level was to catch."

At ECU, Godwin realized he wanted to coach. That was a change.

"Early on, I thought I was going to be a lawyer," Godwin said. "That was kind of my track. ... Just watching TV and seeing people that get to argue in the courtroom. I thought that was cool. I said that's what I want to do. I could see myself doing that. I was a good student. Thankfully, my Mom (Kathy) drove me to be good in the classroom as well because most athletes are driven on the field but they're not driven in the classroom. My Mom was really behind the scenes to make sure that I did well in school.

His mother was the school nurse.

"I had her at the high school and my Dad at the high school," Godwin said. "There wasn't much that got by them if something went wrong. ... If I did get in trouble, they knew about it before I did. ... Once I got in college and played for Coach LeClair and my career was over, I had been influenced by so many great people I thought coaching was the path I wanted to take. I always loved athletics. Any sport. Football, basketball, baseball. I just loved the competitiveness of it. Now that I'm in college athletics, I wouldn't want to do anything else. I love the college atmosphere. I love the camaraderie of the teams and stuff. I'm a baseball coach but I'm a sports junkie. Those are the things that drive me — my competitiveness and I just love sports.

It took some time for Godwin to appreciate the demanding LeClair.

"At the time you were going through it, you didn't see his greatness," Godwin said. "The first year, he pushed us so hard because he wanted to see who wanted to be a part of the program he was building. He was fair to everybody but the stuff we went through was like Navy Seal-like stuff. We went through a kind of weeding-out process. ... The best thing about Coach LeClair is he took a group of guys that were not the most talented. A lot of bigger schools didn't recruit us. He made us believe that we could beat anybody because of our work ethic and the way we went about things at practice. He made us believe that we were the hardest working team in the country so when we stepped on the field, we had a swagger about us that we could beat anybody.

"Another thing was that he treated everybody fair. It didn't matter if you were the 35th guy on the roster or the best player. He treated everybody the same. I think that's one of the things I've taken through my coaching career. That 35th player is just as important as your No. 1 player as far as how you handle them in a human aspect. Those are the things he was really good at."

Godwin's coaching career began on the high school level at Kinston.

"My buddy, Wells Gulledge, who is now the head basketball coach at Parrott Academy, was the head basketball coach at Kinston High School. I went to go see him in the Glaxo at Reynolds Coliseum (Raleigh) in a Christmas tournament. Craig Hill, the principal at the time, was Kinston's basketball coach when I played high school so I knew Mr. Hill. So Mr. Hill saw me on the sideline and he said, 'Hey, Cliff, what are you doing?' This was December of 2002 and I had just finished up my masters at East Carolina. I said I wanted to get into college coaching but this wasn't a good time. I had sent out some emails. Just right off the cuff, he goes, 'Well, Cliff, why don't you come work at Kinston High School this spring? Ronnie Battle is going to retire after this year. You'll be an assistant this year and then you'll be our head coach next year. That was like a one-minute conversation and I'm sitting there. I'm 24 years old at the time, thinking, 'Wow. I don't know. Should I take it?' I said, 'Can I get back with you.' Long story short, I called him up and said, 'Yeah, I'd like to.' So I was an assistant coach at Kinston High School in the spring of '03.

"That summer is when I went to UNC-Wilmington. Coach (Mark) Scalf called me up that summer and asked me would I be interested in the volunteer assistant coaching position. I said, 'Sure.' He said, 'Well, there's a catch to it. You're not going to make much money. You're only going to make $8,000.' I said, 'Man, I'm in. I want to get into college coaching. I want to get my foot in the door.' That summer through the next summer I was at UNC-Wilmington. We won a conference championship. That was actually Coach Scalf's first conference championship as a head coach so that was really cool. We had a really good team.

"That summer the East Coast Professional Showcase was held at UNC-Wilmington, which is the top 150 high school baseball players East of the Mississippi and scouts pick the teams. Every college coach, pretty much across the country, is there to recruit that event. I'm in charge of the grounds. I'm in charge of laundry. I'm also trying to learn recruiting, so in between games I'm watering the field. I'm dirty and messed up and then I try to run back and take notes on these players. Erik Bakich was the assistant at Vanderbilt. Him and Tim Corbin were at the event. Coach Corbin just asked Erik, 'Do you know who that guy is? He's working on the field. He's trying to scout.' Erik is like, 'Yeah, I played with him at East Carolina.' They had a conversation about me being director of operations at Vanderbilt. At the time, not a lot of people had that position. It was still a low-paying position. Now, almost everybody in Division I baseball has that person.

"So Erik asked me about it and I'm like, 'Erik, should I be interested?' He's like, 'You should be, because it's working for Coach Corbin.' It's going to be a great learning experience. It'll be great.'

"I just picked my stuff up and moved it to Nashville. I tell you these prices because I think a lot of people in the industry that are coming up when they look at Cliff Godwin and they look at Tim Corbin, they think we just became that person. Like it was handed to them. Once again, I wasn't paid anything. I was paid like $12,500 for a year just to be an operations guy.

"It was such a great experience under Coach Corbin because I was like Coach Corbin's right hand man. I was with him all the time. We'd be talking about practice. Talk about Bullpen Club stuff which was kind of the fundraising arm of our program. Any kind of administrative stuff — travel, team meals — really just learning the ins and outs of Division I baseball at a high level which I had no idea of before. I just knew kind of the field side at UNC-Wilmington. Now I was put behind the scenes and learned a lot more of what it takes. A lot of people don't understand the stuff we have to deal with off the field. That's where I really learned that part. I was there for one year and I got a chance to be coach in the summer for the Wilmington Sharks. I was a head coach in the Coastal Plain League."

Former ECU assistant coach Kevin McMullan, who was a vital member of the Pirates staff in the LeClair era, helped Godwin to the next stop on his coaching journey.

"About halfway through the summer, Kevin McMullan called me," Godwin said. "At the time, he had just gotten the job as assistant at the University of Virginia. He asked me if I would be interested in being a hitting coach and catching coach at Notre Dame. Brian O'Connor, who's the head coach at Virginia, had worked for Paul Mainieri for nine years as pitching coach at Notre Dame before he got the head coaching job so that was kind of the connection. I said, 'Coach Mac, should I be?' He goes, 'Yeah, they're a Top 25 baseball program and it would be great.' So I flew up there and interviewed. I had never been to Notre Dame. The only thing I knew about Notre Dame was their football program. So I went up there. I was the hitting and catching coach for a year at Notre Dame. We won the Big East, had a great run. I had a chance to coach Jeff Samardzija, who was an All-American football player and an All-American baseball player. That was pretty neat.

"That summer Coach Mainieri got hired as the head coach at LSU so that's how I got to LSU for two years. We went to Omaha (College World Series) in 2008. We had a 23-game winning streak. People think LSU is always good but that first year when we got there we weren't. We were right around .500 and didn't make the SEC Tournament. We signed the No. 1-ranked recruiting class in the country and then the next year, we went to Omaha.

"Then Terry Rooney, the pitching coach at LSU, got hired as the head coach at the University of Central Florida. At LSU, I was coaching third base but I wasn't putting on the signs. I just wanted more. It was tough for me to walk away from LSU because it's considered one of the best programs in the country when it comes to baseball. I needed more for me. I needed to put on the hits and runs, put on the sacrifice bunts, put on the steals, be more of an offensive coordinator so to speak. Terry recruited me to go to University of Central Florida. A lot of people questioned that decision for me in the profession because why would you leave LSU? I kind of questioned myself because it was hard. It was a lot of work.

"You're thrown into the state of Florida. You're like fifth or sixth in the pecking order. Florida's got a lot of players but you're competing against Florida, Florida State, Miami. At the time, UCF wasn't good so South Florida, North Florida, FAU — there's a lot of schools to choose from. That's really where I learned how to recruit because we weren't considered the best. No offense, but if you're at LSU, it's pretty easy to recruit. You can go pick whoever you want and most of the time they're going to come to LSU. At UCF, that was much different. I really learned the state of Florida, learned how to recruit. We turned the program around and went to a regional in 2011. I was really just set on staying there until I became a head coach."

Another phone call had Godwin packing again.

"Mike Bianco called me in the summer of '11 and asked me if I would be interested in a job at Ole Miss," Godwin said. "I was like, 'Yeah, Coach B, I would like to talk to you but I don't know if I'm interested.' So I flew out to Oxford and I remembered when we played Ole Miss in 2008 when I was at LSU. There was 11,000 people there the game we played them. Eli Manning threw out the first pitch. It was packed. It was just a college town. It reminded me a lot of Eastern North Carolina. Orlando was awesome but Oxford was much more home to me. It was the first time that I felt like, man, this is home. So I ended up taking that job and it was one of my best decisions in my life. I met so many great people. Coach B was awesome. Coach (Carl) Lafferty is one of my best friends. I'm actually godfather of his son. To be able to go to Omaha with Ole Miss and they hadn't been in 42 years, it's just a special place to me. We went to Omaha. East Carolina came calling and interviewed me out in Omaha.

"And here we are."

Godwin has been to the College World Series twice, once to Rosenblatt Stadium and once to the new site, Ameritrade Stadium. Since baseball is a game of threes, perhaps that bodes well for the Pirates.

Godwin gets up early in the morning and likes to get a workout in. He got used to going to work early when he helped out on the tobacco farm of his grandparents, which was located near the Greene-Lenoir county line, about six miles from Snow Hill on Highway 58.

"I get up early because I don't want people to beat me," Godwin said. "My grandparents (Bill and Marjorie Albritton) were a huge influence on me growing up. I'd get up at 5:30 or 6 in the morning. My grandmother would fix breakfast and I would go out to the field. I would go play baseball at night. When I got old enough, it was American Legion. If I struck out three times and played terrible, nobody asked me if I was tired because I worked too hard. It was, 'You're getting up at 5:30 or 6 and you're going to work and you need to play better tomorrow night.' "

Godwin laughs at the recollection. He often shares the story with young players today.

Preseason practice is going well. The Pirates open at 3 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 13, at home against Virginia, the CWS runner-up to Vanderbilt last season.

"We've had to battle some weather but guys are excited," Godwin said. "They're putting in a lot of hard work. The guys we have in the locker room have really bought in. They're committed to winning. They're thirsty for winning. I really believe that. We've got a great group."

Godwin said he hasn't been as demanding as Coach LeClair's Navy Seals approach.

"I'd say close," said the Pirates coach. "I know some of the stuff that Coach LeClair put us through that I can't do now or I'd be fired, but they've been tested physically and mentally. They've been challenged and they've answered the bell. They believe they deserve success."

Godwin feels good about his November signees. He expects to secure a few more players in April.

"We're going to need a couple of more pieces to the puzzle," he said. "But it's very good to this point. We signed some athletes, some guys that we wanted to provide some speed to the lineup. Some more power and then we signed a lot of pitching. That's probably our biggest need right now."

Godwin wants personnel to enable a style of play that will put pressure on opposing defenses with speed at both ends of the batting order and batters that can drive the ball in the middle of the lineup. He will coach third base and direct the offense.

"The perfect world scenario for me is having one or two guys at the top and one or two guys at the bottom who can run," Godwin said. "When they get to first base, pitchers are worried about them stealing second. Then have four or five guys in the middle who can really drive the baseball. When I say drive the baseball — doubles, home runs — the Bryce Harmans and Luke Lowerys of the world. The pitcher's worried about the guy at first, now you've got Bryce Harman up and he either hits a double and the guy scores or he hits a home run because the guy was worried about the other guy at first base.

"Right now, we don't have a tremendous amount of team speed but we do have some guys who can hit. Moving forward, we need a little more athleticism, especially in the outfield to be able to put pressure on people.

"Defensively, we just want to play clean baseball. Play clean, play fundamentally sound. Catch the baseball. Pitching-wise, throw strikes, compete and get people out.

"I think it will be a much more fast-paced game for the fans and I think they'll enjoy it."

The goal remains the same as the era before Godwin began his coaching odyssey.

"The vision is simple," he said. "We're trying to go to Omaha. Every single day when I wake up it's how can we get one step closer to Omaha. It's very tough to get to. I was at Ole Miss, an SEC team, and one of the best coaches in college baseball, Mike Bianco, and this past year was his fifth Super Regional. It's not somewhere that's easy to get to.

"We've got to keep improving our facilities so we can keep attracting the best recruits in the country. We've got to keep recruiting. The guys in our locker room have that vision.

"That's our vision. We want to go to Omaha. We want to host regionals and Super Regionals."