Few college baseball programs in the country have experienced the duality of regular season success and postseason failure quite like the East Carolina University Pirates.
The Pirates have made their way to the NCAA Baseball Tournament 33 times since 1964, winning regionals seven times between 2001 and 2022, yet have never made the pilgrimage to TD Ameritrade Park in Omaha.
Oddsmakers at BetMGM Sportsbook currently list the Pirates at +6000 to win the program’s first title in 2023, with ECU listed alongside baseball powers like Miami and Oregon on the operator’s CWS odds board. Should mobile North Carolina sports betting be up and running this time next year, the Pirates will get their fair share of future looks from bettors.
The program actually has the most NCAA tournament appearances without a College World Series appearance. Ranked No. 15 in the nation and waiting to play the loser of Thursday's game between UCF and South Florida on Friday in the AAC Tournament, BetCarolina.com took a look at how this team could potentially be the first Pirates squad to advance to Omaha.
BetCarolina, which will keep you posted on all state College World Series storylines next month, is also your home for any news related to North Carolina sports betting apps, which could be legal by the end of the year.
Could 2023 Be The Year of the Pirate For ECU Baseball?
Between landing a record number of players on the All-American Athletic Conference teams (11) and finishing the regular season with a .724 winning percentage, it’s been another banner year for the Pirates in Greenville.
The Pirates have been especially lethal at Clark-LeClair Stadium, where they’ve gone 29-5 (.853) this year, establishing one of the best home field advantages in college baseball. That mark helped them capture their fourth straight AAC regular season title.
ECU’s run at the AAC tournament in Clearwater, Fla., comes on the heels of a 10-2 run during the month of May that saw the Pirates pull off sweeps of Cincinnati, Memphis and USF, offset by a pair of run-one losses to Campbell on May 16 and UNC (2-1) on May 3.
The Pirates find themselves ranked 15th in the latest D1Baseball.com top 25 rankings, meaning they’re in good shape to possibly host a regional for the fifth consecutive year, after winning the last three regionals held in Greenville.
Time To Advance Out Of Super Regional
The last time that ECU didn’t host a regional was in 2016, when they upset UVA in the Charlottesville regional, only to fall to Texas Tech in the Super Regional round of the tournament.
With a decent run at this weekend’s AAC baseball tournament, the Pirates could very well find themselves hosting a regional in Greenville again this season.
From there, it’s all about the right mixture of good luck and good baseball, as a poorly timed error or at-bat could very well be the difference between another early exit and the school’s first ever trip to Omaha in 2023.
For now, the Pirates find themselves in good shape to once again welcome the college baseball world to Greenville in 2023, with an eye on righting the wrongs that kept them from advancing past the Super Regional round in the weeks ahead.
Unfortunately, there are no legal online sports betting sites or apps available for North Carolina bettors to wager on the Pirates, such as a BetMGM North Carolina.
