Marshall-East Carolina Weekend Series: Better Late Than Never

It took some waiting and a little work with the schedule, but baseball was played, and the three-game series between the Marshall Thundering Herd and the East Carolina Pirates finally was finished.

The Pirates traveled to Charleston, WV ranked No. 19 nationally and brought with them an eight-game winning streak.

Marshall, meanwhile, had won only two of their last five, dropping games to Xavier and Western Kentucky. Despite the early-season expectations and hype, the Herd came into this series below .500 (10-12) with a 2-1 mark in Conference USA.

The Pirates were looking strong as they left Greenville with a 18-3 record and a perfect 3-0 mark in-conference.

After a pair of 26-run drubbings leading to victories, ECU was poised to own the series against Marshall. However, the Herd would not go down quietly in Game One, and a solid pitching effort from both teams kept both sides in contention until ECU finally triumphed 7-6

Game Two began with a similar effort; the line was close through the majority of the contest. Marshall led after two innings off a Victor Gomez solo home run, and the Herd was able to maintain that lead until the top of the seventh, when the Pirates' Austin Homan connected with the ball for an RBI double.

But soon after, the game came to a halt as the skies over Charleston opened up in the seventh inning and the game was delayed until Sunday morning.

Nearly two full days later, the players took the soggy field, and East Carolina resumed their efforts, bringing four runners around through the remaining two innings, and cruised to a 5-1 victory.

Game Three was still more of the same neck-and-neck competition, as the bats were mostly quiet through three innings, and no runs were scored by either team. But of course, that was all about to change.

In the fourth, the Pirates put up the first two runs of the game in the top of the inning. But Marshall answered in grand fashion as Thor Meeks drilled his sixth home run of the year and brought in three.

Meeks' thunder, added to the two runs already on the board for the Herd earlier in the inning, helped provide the spark the team needed. In the bottom of the fifth, the Herd was able to tack on one more run and keep ECU from closing the gap. The finished the matchup with a 6-2 victory.

This marked Marshall's first win over a ranked opponent since April 2007, when they beat the Houston Cougars, No. 28 at the time.

 

Marshall finished the weekend with a record of 11-14 overall and a 3-3 mark in Conference USA outings. East Carolina returned home to Greenville after improving to 20-5 overall and 5-1 in-conference.

Marshall baseball will travel to Kentucky and Ohio State this week and resume conference play this weekend with a three-game stand in Hattiesburg against Southern Miss.