While fellow Regional participants Virginia and Coastal Carolina have each won national championships in the last seven years, don’t sleep on the host East Carolina Pirates. Very quietly, the Pirates have turned into one of the most successful baseball programs of the last twenty years.
This season they come into Regionals riding an 18 game winning streak, the best in the country which is good enough to earn them the #8 National Seed in the whole tournament. They’re led by head coach Cliff Godwin who earned American Athletic Conference (AAC) Coach of the Year honors and has ECU in their sixth NCAA Tournament in the last seven times it’s been played.