CLEARWATER, Fla. – No. 8 seed South Florida erased a four-run deficit in the ninth inning Tuesday afternoon and went on to knock off top seed and No. 15 East Carolina 12-11 in 11 innings in the first round of the American Athletic Conference Baseball Championship at BayCare Ballpark.
The Pirates (41-16) will now play No. 5 seed Cincinnati in an elimination game Wednesday at 3 p.m. The Bulls (20-37) advance to a winner’s bracket contest against fourth-seeded South Florida Thursday.
AAC Tournament Central page, game results
Josh Moylan went 3-for-6 with two runs scored and three RBI to pace the ECU offense while Ben Rozenblum led USF with three hits, two runs scored and two runs driven in.
Ethan Brown (2-5) pitched two scoreless innings to earn the victory, walking two and striking out one. Erik Ritchie (1-2) was tagged with the loss after yielding one run on four hits with five strikeouts in 2.2 frames.
South Florida drew first blood in the top of the first. Jake Hunter hit Bobby Boser with a pitch and walked Eric Snow before Drew Brutcher moved the runners into scoring position via a sac bunt. Rafael Betancourt then laced a two-run single into right field to give his team an early 2-0 advantage. East Carolina answered right away as Jacob Starling and Carter Cunningham both went yard to lead off the bottom of the first. Justin Wilcoxen tripled with one out but was thrown out at home attempting to score on a fly ball off the bat of Luke Nowak.
ECU jumped on top in the bottom of the second, loading the bases with a Jacob Jenkins-Cowart single, Alec Makarewicz single and Lane Hoover walk before Starling delivered a sac fly to left that plated Jenkins-Cowart. The Pirates threatened to add to their 3-2 lead in the third, but after a Moylan leadoff double, Hunter Mink responded with three-straight strikeouts to end the inning.
After the scoring settled down for a few frames, the Bulls were able to muster up the tying run in the top of the sixth. Marcus Brodil singled up the middle and moved to third after stealing second. Rozenblum was also hit by a pitch to put runners on the corners with no outs. Carter Spivey induced a pop up behind the plate for the first out, but a Travis Sankovich RBI groundout plated Brodil to knot the score at three.
East Carolina unleashed a barrage of hits in the bottom of the seventh to seize control of the contest. The Pirates sent 10 batters to the dish and scored six runs on seven base knocks, including three run-scoring doubles. Makarewicz sparked the outburst with a sharp single up the middle and advanced to second on a Joey Berini sac bunt. Hoover then singled up the middle to score Makarewicz before Starling kept things going with a double to the left center gap that drove home Hoover for a 5-3 ECU edge. A Moylan single, Wilcoxen double, Cam Clonch single and Ryley Johnson double all plated single runs, leaving the Purple and Gold with a six-run upper hand moving to the eighth.
Trailing by four, USF mounted one last charge in the top of the ninth, loading the bases with no outs thanks to three-straight singles. The Bulls would end up scoring six runs on eight singles to vault in front 11-9.
The Pirates did not go away quietly in the ninth as Cunningham drew a leadoff walk and Moylan crushed an 0-2 offering well over the wall in right field to forge an 11-11 deadlock.
After ECU had the winning run stranded at third in the bottom of the 10th, South Florida took the lead in the 11th when Drew Brutcher singled home Travis Sankovich. Brown pitched a perfect bottom of the frame to preserve the win.
