"I'm real proud of our team's effort today," said ECU coach Billy Godwin. "I thought we did some things offensively to put the game away and got another solid pitching peformance. We showed a lot of resiliency after not swinging the bat real well the first two days."

ECU got another strong performance from reliever Bailey Daniels. Daniels preserved ECU's 5-4 lead in the seventh inning. Daniels hasn't allowed a run, and only three hits in 4 1/3 innings in this tournament.

The Pirates can now sit back and watch Rice and Memphis play another game and waste more pitching, awaiting the opponent to meet in tomorrow's championship game.

"They have to go out and expend more energy and more pitching, so I hope they play about 21 innings right here," Godwin said jokingly.

ECU is now in the drivers seat, No. 1 Rice and No. 5 Memphis should start around 4 o'clock.