Underdog No More, East Carolina Embraces Its Ranking

GREENVILLE, N.C.—Most say East Carolina was 90 feet away. Cliff Godwin likes to say it was inches. He still gets chills just thinking about it.

The ECU head coach was standing in the third-base coach’s box at No. 5 national seed Texas Tech’s Dan Law Field on June 11, 2016. The day before, the Pirates won their first super regional game in program history. On this day, the Pirates had the chance to advance to Omaha for the very first time. They needed only one more win.

This was why Godwin accepted the ECU job two years prior, this moment right here. This was why Godwin decided to wear the No. 23, in honor of the late Keith LeClair, his former head coach, whose dream was to one day lead the Pirates to the College World Series.

ECU was so close. The bases were loaded in the bottom of the 12th, with two outs, score knotted at 1-1. Brady Lloyd, a little-used utility player who had just 12 at-bats on the entire season, stepped to the plate. A familiar narrative—all too often, the hero is a player you’d never expect.

Lloyd makes contact—solid contact—sending the baseball rocketing up the middle, and Godwin is screaming internally, “We’re going to Omaha! We’re going to Omaha!” But then the ball ricochets off the mound, its trajectory off by mere inches, making it playable for the second baseman, who then fires to first for the final out of the inning. An inning later, the Red Raiders plate two runs and win, 3-1. The next day, a revitalized Texas Tech crushes ECU, 11-0.
The Pirates’ season, and their visions of Omaha, were no more.

“When Brady hit the ball up the middle, I was like, ‘We’re going!” Godwin remembered from his office desk in Greenville, about a month before the start of the 2017 season.

“And then it’s like ripped out of your heart.”

The Pirates weren’t supposed to get that far. The No. 3 seed at the home of defending national champion Virginia, the Pirates weren’t even supposed to get out of the Charlottesville Regional, just like they weren’t supposed to win the American Athletic Conference tournament the year before, in Godwin’s first year. For two seasons under Godwin, the Pirates have played above expectations—above the perceived talent on their roster. Last year’s group didn’t produce a single draft pick.

To get that close to Omaha—closer than the program had ever been—and not cross that seemingly impermeable barrier was crushing.

“I want to say that every single guy who was on that team last year thinks about it every day,” said senior ace lefthander Evan Kruczynski. “I mean, if they don’t, then they don’t have a conscience. I didn’t even play in that game, and I think back about what I could’ve done differently.”

Honoring LeClair’s Legacy

Omaha has long been the elusive dream for ECU. Even when LeClair was at the helm, from 1998 until his ALS diagnosis forced him to step down in 2002, the Pirates couldn’t quite break through, despite reaching four straight regionals and developing into a national power. As a program, ECU has made more regional appearances (28) without advancing to Omaha than any other team in the country.

So, yes, Lloyd’s would-be, game-winning, Omaha-clinching single that missed its mark by inches—that hurt. That was, unquestionably, cause for heartbreak. Yet it was also cause for optimism. Spend any amount of time in Greenville, around the renovated Clark-LeClair Stadium, and you’ll find a group of players oozing with confidence and a clear sense of determination. Why?

Because the overwhelming majority of last year’s 38-23 super regional team returns; the team graduated five seniors. Kruczynski, the steady Friday bulldog, who went 8-1, 2.01 last season—he’s back. The fifth-year senior catcher Travis Watkins, whose home run barrage carried the Pirates to victory in the postseason—he’s back. Junior closer Joe Ingle, a dependable arm in the back end of the bullpen for two seasons now—he’s back. Talented freshmen from last year, like toolsy outfielder Dwanya Williams-Sutton and relievers Sam Lanier and Matt Bridges, are all a year older and more polished.

Add in the country’s No. 23 recruiting class, featuring the likes of power hitters Bryant Packard and Spencer Brickhouse and power righthander Trey Benton—all of whom should factor in right away—and you have the No. 6 preseason team, ECU’s highest-ever preseason ranking. The Pirates boast more depth and talent in every area of the field than they have in years.

But there’s something even beyond the roster sheet that is pushing these Pirates—after all, they haven’t reached back-to-back regionals on sheer talent alone. There’s something intangible, a burning sense of purpose, a backbreaking toughness. Even more, there’s a sense that fate has intervened, that in some ways, this is a team of destiny. The Pirates weren’t supposed to punch their ticket to Omaha in Lubbock, Texas.

“Now I sit back, and this isn’t making excuses, but I really think Coach LeClair would want us to go in Greenville,” Godwin said. “I don’t think he’d want us to go on the road. I think he wanted it for the community . . . I want it for the Pirate fans. The kids want it for everyone who’s ever played here, who’s put on the purple and gold.

“It’s a neat story, and the way you finish the book, ‘Coaching Third,’ which is the story about Coach LeClair, is winning the national championship. So that’s what we’re working towards every day.”

Like almost every facet of ECU’s program, this team’s mission—its source of strength—begins and ends with the No. 23.

Pirate Pluck

It was like a scene out of “Friday Night Lights,” or any of those rags-to-riches sports movies and TV shows that aim to inspire. Cliff Godwin walked onto campus in the fall of 2014, inheriting a group of players who went 33-26 that spring, and he immediately challenged their manhood.

He told them from the outset that the fall of 2014 was going to be the most challenging fall of their lives, that they would have to work out harder than they ever have before, and that anyone who wasn’t willing to put in that effort could leave. He meant it. Half a dozen players took him up on that offer and walked out the door.

But that was fine. Even if that ultimatum left the Pirates shorthanded, which it did, Godwin wanted to weed out the players who wouldn’t buy into the blue-collar, farm-bred mindset he was trying to instill. And the rest, well, they were left to contend with an excruciating fall. Godwin kept his promise.

“I don’t even wanna think about the first fall,” said Ingle, one of only two players remaining from that year’s seven-player freshman class. “You’re getting up (in the morning), and you’re just like, ‘Damn.’”

Godwin had his new players waking up every day at 4 or 5 a.m. for a morning lift. They would often go from practices straight into lifts, as well. After workouts, they would transition to something called an “M.J. Challenge,” in honor of Michael Jordan—another inspirational No. 23—where players would have to compete against each other in various tests of physical strength, such as who could hold a weight plate the longest. Those challenges forced the Pirates to try to find that extra gear, to tune out the post-workout soreness and channel their competitive fire.

“The things we did that year were just gruesome—every day throwing up, every single day,” Kruczynski said. “You would walk through campus, and if someone looked at you funny, you’d feel like you could just sock them because they didn’t know what you went through that morning.”

There was a method behind all of it; Godwin wasn’t simply being cruel. In previous assistant coaching stops at Mississippi, Louisiana State and more, he had seen the inner workings of frequent Omaha-bound programs. And as an ECU player himself, playing under LeClair, he experienced a culture of toughness, of embracing your underdog status and using it as motivation to outwork the competition.

It’s In The Book

Now the head coach, Godwin has tried to recreate that culture. He’s had every player read “Coaching Third,” the book about LeClair’s coaching career and battle with ALS. He’s promised to permanently retire the No. 23 that he wears, in LeClair’s honor, once the Pirates make it to Omaha.

Godwin has laid out a mindset, like sandpaper, that’s given the Pirates an outer layer of grittiness, and that edge has clearly served them well through two seasons. In those two years, they’ve rarely, if ever, looked intimidated on a baseball field.

“That’s what I’d hope people would say about every team that I’m a part of,” Godwin said, “because the teams that I played for under coach LeClair—same thing. Not the most highly touted, not the most highly recruited, not the (top) draft prospects or whatever. We were just a group of guys who felt like we had worked harder than anybody else in the country and we could go out and play anybody, anytime and anyplace.”

But this season, the feeling is a little different—a little strange, even. For once, ECU isn’t the underdog. For the first time since Godwin has taken over, the Pirates begin the season firmly on the radar, the outside expectations are higher than they’ve ever been. But the internal expectations? The goals inside the ECU locker room? They haven’t changed in the slightest.

“In the past, we haven’t always been the most talented team, so we had to look for ways to gain an edge on the competition,” said Watkins, one of the team’s captains along with Kruczynski and senior Eric Tyler. “We were built for pressure situations, for tough situations, when things aren’t going our way, we’re going to have the big body language and stuff like that to give us that edge.

“This year we’re going to be one of the most talented teams that we’ve ever had. I mean, we have the pitching, we have the veterans, we’ve got the defense, the hitters. We’re going to be a good team, and I think this is where it all comes together—the toughness and the talent kind of meet. And it’s going to be interesting.” Added Ingle: “The hype for playing for East Carolina now is going to be a lot more. I mean, it kind of makes you want to cry a little bit, just because of how much we’ve gone through and seeing the foundation and process laid out like it has.”

Players like Ingle and Watkins and Kruczynski, who went through that painstaking first fall, who experienced the heartbreak of falling just short a year ago, have made sure to help this year’s freshmen along. As talented as they may be, those freshmen will have to work just as hard and buy in just as much as ECU’s veterans have. By all indications, they’re on the right track.

The Pirates who played last year, who were on the field in Lubbock, they talk about that moment almost every day—the Omaha trip that almost was. They don’t shy away from it. They want the team’s newcomers to feel that same angst, that same hunger.

“It wasn’t until after the game where it really hits you like, ‘Dang, we had it. We had them on the ropes. We silenced their crowd. We had them on the hot seat, and we let it slip away,’” Kruczynski said. “But it was a learning experience, that’s for sure. We’ve used that as our motivation tool all offseason, and we’ve basically allowed the freshmen to have the same feeling we have.

“Even though they weren’t on the team, we let them know right when they stepped on campus, we said, ‘Hey, getting to that point wasn’t easy. But when we get to that point this year, we’re going to finish it because we’re not going to have the same feeling walking off that field again.’”

And if the Pirates have their way, the field they walk off will be the one in Greenville.