Rice Baseball ended its regular season with a sweep at the hands of East Carolina and now must await its postseason fate as other teams finish play.
FRIDAY | ECU 8 – Rice 2
Parker Smith labored through eight innings on Friday night, more or less keeping the ECU offense at bay in six of those frames. The Pirates made him pay in those two decisive innings, though, putting up a four-spot in the fourth and a three-spot in the eighth.
Last Time Out: Rice Baseball run-rules Texas Southern in midweek finale
Unfortunately for Smith, he didn’t get much help from the Rice bats. Rice scored once on a sac fly in the second and once again on a fielder’s choice in the seventh. Runs were hard to come by on a night when the offense totaled just four hits and did not draw any walks.
SATURDAY (AM) | ECU 15 – Rice 5 (8 innings)
A short day from JD McCracken led to a disastrous beginning of a Saturday doubleheader for Rice baseball. McCracken was pulled after a four-walk first inning in favor of Garrett Stratton, who faired even worse in the second inning, surrendering seven runs before being lifted himself for Mark Perkins. Despite chipping into the lead with a pair of runs of their own in the top half of the second, Rice entered the third inning trailing 11-2.
Another slow start for the bats was not enough to overcome the massive early deficit. Rice tallied five hits and five runs, three of which came on solo home runs by Kyte McDonald, Pierce Gallo and Trey Duffield. None of them were enough to prevent ECU from winning the game via a run-rule decision in the eighth.
SATURDAY (PM) | ECU 6 – Rice 4
East Carolina got out in front in the first inning with a two-run home run, putting the Owls behind the eight ball once again. This time, though, the bats woke up. Six consecutive hits and four runs later, Rice was in front. Max Johnson delivered the first RBI whack with a two-run double. Kyte McDonald added another RBI hit and then Treyton Rank drove in run number four.
More: Jose Cruz Jr. and the trajectory of Rice Baseball
ECU got one run back in the second, then Rice called on Davion Hickson to go the rest of the way. He held the Pirates to six hits in 4.1 innings of work, but five of those hits came consecutively in the sixth inning, allowing ECU to retake the lead, 6-4. They would hold on to win by that score.
THREE FOR THE ROAD
Subscriber content. Please login to see the full post or visit our Patreon page.
1. Starting pitching struggles
