Tag: ECU Pirates

East Carolina parts way with head coach Mike Houston

ECU becomes the first school to jump on the coaching carousel in 2024.

The East Carolina Pirates have fired head coach Mike Houston following the 48-28 loss to Army. ECU becomes the first team in 2024 to jump on the coaching carousel.

Houston finishes his tenure with ECU with a record of 27-38 and 15-28 in American Athletic Conference play. He never saw anywhere near the same success as he did with James Madison. In five plus seasons the Pirates had two winning season where the team was 15-10 in 2021 and 2022. Outside of those two years, ECU was a combined 12-28 including 5-14 over the last 19 games.

The Pirates will begin their search for the next head football coach at East Carolina University. Defensive coordinator Blake Harrell has been named the interim head coach for the rest of the season, ECU announced in a press release on the move.

“After a comprehensive evaluation of our football program, I informed Mike Houston this morning that we are making a change in leadership,” said AD Jon Gilbert. “This was a very difficult decision. Mike has led our program the last five plus seasons with tremendous class and has positively impacted so many student-athletes. After earning back-to-back bowl invitations, we looked poised for continued success. Unfortunately, we have not seen the results we all want, and a change is needed to move the program forward. We have high expectations and those are not changing.

“We are confident we will identify the right leader for our football program. I believe ECU is a premier job with a passionate fan base, unprecedented support from our Pirate Club donors, and great facilities that continue to improve. Right now, we are focusing on our student-athletes as they compete for a postseason opportunity in the final five regular season games. My hope is Pirate Nation will rally around our student-athletes like they have always done.”

ECU still has an opportunity to make a run at a bowl game with five games left on the schedule. The Pirates will face the Temple Owls on Saturday, much like ECU they are looking to keep any fading hopes of a postseason bowl alive.

After massive sweep of No. 18 TCU, OU baseball lands in D1Baseball’s top 25 at No. 17

Oklahoma lands in D1Baseball’s Top 25 for the first time this season after sweeping No.18 TCU.

This OU baseball team has been playing some inspired baseball recently. The Sooners have now reeled off back-to-back conference sweeps to start the 2024 conference schedule.

Despite a midweek loss to their Bedlam rivals Oklahoma State, the Sooners went 4-1 last week. Their conquest of the TCU Horned Frogs in Fort Worth raised plenty of eyebrows and was more than enough for the Sooners to go from unranked to No. 17 in the latest D1Baseball Top 25.

TCU was No. 12 in the country when the Sooners played this weekend, and now they are 18th, directly behind the Sooners. With Oklahoma’s inclusion into the mix, the Big 12 has two teams in the top 25. Texas and Texas Tech both fell out in this latest update after each team lost two games last week.

At the top, Arkansas remains the nation’s number-one team. Oregon State is behind them, followed by perennial powerhouse Vanderbilt at three—Clemson, LSU, and Florida slot in at four, five, and six. Texas A&M, Tennessee, Duke, and ECU round out the top 10.

The Sooners also were ranked 14th by Baseball America and 18th by Perfect Game USA.

After four straight wins against teams from the state of Texas, Oklahoma will look to keep it going on Tuesday at L. Dale Mitchell Park for a midweek matchup vs. No. 15 Dallas Baptist on Tuesday night. Dallas Baptist beat Oklahoma earlier this season, 11-7, when the two met in Dallas for a midweek affair.

 

Oklahoma Baseball lands in Charlottesville Regional, face ECU Friday

Oklahoma baseball makes it back to the NCAA Tournament as they sneak in as an at-large team and will take on the ECU Pirates.

The wait is over. The Oklahoma Sooners baseball team has found its way back into the NCAA Tournament. The journey was never easy and was full of ups and downs, but the Sooners earned an at-large bid after selections were announced on the official selection show Monday. Oklahoma received the next to last at-large bid per the show’s hosts.

Oklahoma (31-26) will play in the Charlottesville regional with the University of Virginia (45-12) as hosts. Their first opponent will be the ECU Pirates (45-17) out of the American Athletic Conference. The Pirates won the regular season crown but fell short in the conference tournament as the Tulane Green Wave, who finished second to last in the conference, pulled off an incredible run to win the tournament title. ECU’s failure in the tournament effectively pushed ECU out of potentially hosting a regional.

Oklahoma’s inclusion into the field was in real doubt as of Friday night. The Sooners were at No. 40 in the NCAA’s RPI after bowing out of the Big 12 tourney.

With no overly impressive resume, Oklahoma needed serious help. They were only 11-13 in conference play and made no run in the conference tournament. One positive Oklahoma had going forward, which undoubtedly played a large role in its selection, was their strength of schedule.

While Oklahoma struggled, they also played a grinding schedule that battle-tested them. For a team that lost a significant number of key players from the 2022 run, earning a postseason berth should be commended.

It remains to be seen if they can replicate the magic of getting all the way to the championship series like they did last year, but getting in is the first step.

The fourth and final team in the region is Army West Point (38-16). If the Sooners make it out of the regional, they would take on the winner of the Conway regional hosted by Coastal Carolina, which features Duke, UNC Wilmington, and Rider.

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College umpire oddly pushes ECU’s Bryson Worrell to stop him from admiring a huge HR

You cannot put your hands on a player like that.

It turns out that MLB umpires aren’t the only umpiring group that needs a reality check in 2022. College umpires aren’t faring much better either.

The East Carolina Pirates are in search of their first men’s College World Series berth in program history, and Monday’s regional-clinching 13-4 win over Coastal Carolina put them on track to potentially end that drought. No moment seemed bigger than Bryson Worrell’s three-run home run in the seventh inning, but of course, an umpire had to step in and make it about himself.

After Worrell — with a green light on 3-0 — crushed a pitch over the right-field wall, he stood and admired the ball before flipping his bat. But as he was doing so, home plate umpire Perry Costello jumped to his feet and pushed Worrell to start running.

And another look:

There’s really no reason for that, and an umpire should never be going out of his way to place his hands on a player. If Worrell had done something similar to an umpire, he would have been ejected immediately (and possibly suspended). Costello knows that, and the NCAA should not let this ump work into the Super Regional. It’s a game — let Worrell enjoy the moment.

Baseball fans also weren’t pleased with how Costello conducted himself there.