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BAILEY'S TAKE
ON PIRATE SPORTS
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From the Anchor Desk
Tuesday, May 5, 2008
By Brian Bailey |
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Jockeying for first place heats up
By
Brian Bailey
©2009 Bonesville.net
All rights reserved.
This first weekend of
May is known for horse
racing. Mine that Bird
came out of nowhere to
win the Kentucky Derby.
The Conference USA
baseball race is more of
a three-horse affair.
Two of those horses face
off this weekend.
Rice dropped the first
game to Houston this
past weekend, but the
Owls came back and took
the series with two
straight wins. At the
same time, the Pirates
swept Louisiana
Lafayette in a
non-conference series.
With two league weekends
to go, Rice leads East
Carolina by one game
(basically two games
because of the
tiebreaker) and Houston
by two games (three with
the tiebreaker).
Rice is certainly in the
driver’s seat. The Owls
host Central Florida and
then travel to UAB to
end the season.
Houston has East
Carolina this weekend,
and then travels to UCF.
The Pirates meet the
Cougars before hosting
Memphis to close out the
season.
The Pirates break this
week for exams before
making the trip to
Texas. Pirate coach
Billy Godwin says the
break comes at an
opportune time.
“It’ll be good,” said
Godwin. “We are 48 games
in and we need to rest a
little bit and focus in.
Every weekend in
Conference USA is
critical. I guarantee
that when we get back
from Houston we’ll be
talking about the
Memphis series and how
important that series
will be.”
East Carolina got great
starting pitching all
weekend long against the
Ragin’ Cajuns. Godwin
says that was key,
especially getting
a good start from
Brad Mincey
on Sunday.
“You always worry
because you don’t have
the intensity of a
conference weekend,”
Godwin explained. “Guys
are in exams, so there
are a lot of factors
going on around them. We
played well enough to
win three games and
we’re grateful for that.
We’ll give them time to
focus on the academics
for the next few days
and I guess the next
time we play I’ll have
their undivided
attention because school
will be over.”
The Pirates
moved up
to 24th this week in the
Rivals.com poll. ECU is
22nd by NCBWA, 24th by
Baseball America and
30th by Collegiate
Baseball.
Something to prove in El
Paso
The East Carolina
softball squad hopes to
bring a Conference USA
title home from El Paso
this weekend.
The Pirates open play on
Thursday as the second
seed in the tournament.
ECU completed the
regular season 19-5 in
league play but finished
percentage points behind
Tulsa for the regular
season title. Tulsa was
16-4, but lost several
games due to weather and
ended up with a higher
winning percentage than
ECU (.800 compared to
.792).
“As a team we’ve taken
the high side,” said
Coach Tracey Kee. “But I
could tell at practice
today that it may give
us added motivation.”
The Pirates are 40-14
and hope to add to their
NCAA resume with a
couple of more wins, and
maybe a first ever
Conference USA title
behind ace pitcher Toni
Paisley.
“The only guarantee for
postseason is that the
tournament champion gets
a bid,” added Kee. “Our
league could get a
couple, but we’ll feel
better if we can bring
home that trophy this
weekend.”
East Carolina opens the
event playing 7th seed
and host Texas-El Paso
on Thursday night.
BB
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05/05/2009 02:19:04 AM |
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