With baseball in North Carolina surging, ECU, UNC not taking it for granted

The state of North Carolina is rich with baseball talent. Five teams from the state are ranked inside the preseason D1Baseball Top 25 rankings — No. 1 Wake Forest, No. 11 East Carolina, No. 12 Duke, No. 13 NC State, and No. 15 North Carolina.

Additionally, three teams from South Carolina cracked the top 25 — No. 10 Clemson, No. 18 Coastal Carolina, and No. 25 South Carolina. Others across the two states are right on the cusp.

All in all, it’s impossible to overlook just how high the quality of baseball is around the state of North Carolina. And that means a lot to the teams that are a part of it.

ECU head coach Cliff Godwin is entering his tenth season as the Pirates’ head coach, and he also played there during his playing career. Under Godwin, ECU has been accustomed to playing quite a few teams from around the state, whether it be on midweeks or weekends.

Most teams around the state would consider each other in-state rivals. Fans get fired up for those meetings, too, with electric environments essentially wherever they are played. But the impact goes beyond baseball, as well.

“You know, there was a little bit of time where NC State and us didn’t play,” Godwin said at ECU media day on Monday. “But Coach Avent has been really good about playing us home and away. And this year actually will be pretty cool. We’re both going to wear – we’ll wear 23 jerseys both games, they’ll wear 26 jerseys to raise awareness for ALS because Chris Combs, who played for them, obviously passed away from ALS. And you know, Coach LeClair, 23. So it’ll be cool.

“North Carolina, Coach Forbes has been awesome. You talked about the second weekend of the season, you’re gonna play a three game series against one of the best programs in the country. So we’ll play Friday in Chapel Hill, Saturday in Fayetteville and then Sunday here. We’re going to continue that series as long as both of us are the head coaches at our prospective schools. And then you’ve got UNCW, that we’ve played since the beginning of time back when I played here, which is a really good opponent. Campbell. So where we’re located geographically, it’s really ideal to play really, really good teams within, less than a two-hour driving distance.”

UNC head coach Scott Forbes is entering his fourth season as the Tar Heels’ head coach, though his experience in the Carolinas goes much further. He began his coaching career in 1999 as an assistant at UNC, before leaving for Winthrop from 2003-2005. He returned to Chapel Hill in 2006 and has been there ever since.

For Forbes, he has seen firsthand how strong the competition is across the state. But he also acknowledges that heading into the 2024 season, UNC is the lowest-ranked team from North Carolina amongst the five ranked clubs. Now, Forbes and UNC are excited to face such strong competition, and they want to prove that they are worthy of that preseason ranking themselves.

“I love it. The better it is, the better the competition is, the more you find out what you have,” Forbes said. “And I think we’re the lowest ranked team. So they must all be better than us. We’ll just have to see if we can hang with them.

“The area is phenomenal. I think it’s awesome. But again, they’re preseason. So we’ll see where everybody is as we move along throughout the season.”

Baseball in North Carolina also means a lot to the players on the field

Maybe the best part about the high quality of baseball across North Carolina is the atmosphere that’s created for each and every game. A few teams from the state share a conference, as UNC, NC State, Duke and Wake Forest all play in the ACC. Conference games already carry an extra meaning, but when they also come against those teams within the state, it means even more.

While ECU is not from the ACC, instead playing in the AAC, the Pirates will play the weekend series against UNC, also playing play two midweek games against each of Campbell, UNCW, NC State and Elon, and one midweek against Duke.

And especially when the game is in Greenville, the environment is unmatched.

“It’s kind of cool having a Tuesday game at 4:30 with 8,000 people here,” ECU pitcher Danny Beal said. “Stuff like that doesn’t happen everywhere. We don’t take it for granted, because we are beyond blessed to be able to play for these coaches and these fans. And it’s only going to get better this year with the hype that’s surrounding us.”

For UNC star outfielder and potential top ten MLB Draft pick Vance Honeycutt, he has his eyes on those in-state weekends against teams from the ACC.

“You definitely have those in-state rivalries circled on the calendar,” Honeycutt admitted. “It’s always fun. Personally, playing State and Wake and Duke away, I think that’s going to be a lot of fun.”

In the end, teams from North Carolina will always play each other in baseball. The close proximity to each other will always make that a reality. But when the large majority of those teams are strong and playing at a high level, which historically has been the case, it makes it even sweeter.

“It’s always fun to play those in-state schools,” ECU first baseman/outfielder Carter Cunningham said. “And to think about the quality of baseball in the state of North Carolina, it only helps us. It only makes us better. But obviously, those rivalry games are always fun to be a part of. I think they bring out the best in both teams, and that’s why they’re on our schedule. It’s fun for us, it’s fun for the fans, and at the end of the day it just makes us better.”

The 2024 college baseball season will begin on Friday, February 16.