CLEARWATER, Fla. – The No. 2 seed East Carolina utilized timely situational hitting to down No. 3 Rice 4-3 in the 2026 American Baseball Championship at BayCare Ballpark on Friday morning.

The Pirates (34-21-1) advance to face the winner of No. 1 UTSA versus No. 5 Memphis on Saturday at 10 a.m. ET in the winner’s bracket. Rice (35-23) will return to face No. 4 UAB at approximately 4:30 p.m. ET in an elimination game on Friday evening.

Rice was able to claw out a run thanks to two ECU errors in the top of the first inning. A dropped fly ball in left field with two outs gave the Owls a 1-0 lead. ECU starter Ryan Towers (7-3) got out of the jam with a ground ball out to limit the damage.

ECU tied the score to lead off the bottom of the third. Jack Herring drove a 1-1 pitch to opposite field and gone over the left field wall. Herring’s ninth homer of the season squared the game at 1-1. Back-to-back wild pitches following a Braden Burress single brought Burress around to score to vault the Pirates in front 2-1.

Timely two-out hitting by ECU continued the rally for the Pirates in the bottom of the fourth inning. Consecutive RBI doubles from Grady Lenahan and Herring chased the Rice starter Ethan Sanders (5-6) and extended the lead for ECU to 4-1.

Rice closed the gap to 4-2 in the top of the sixth inning after JC Davis led off with a single and Garet Boehm brought Davis home with an RBI double. Following a two-out walk that chased Towers, ECU reliever Joseph Webb entered and promptly logged a full-count strikeout to strand two runners on base.

A pair of walks and a wild pitch brought across a third Rice run to trim the deficit to 4-3 with two outs in the top of the ninth. ECU reliever Ethan Norby froze the final batter on a 2-2 offering to end the contest.

Towers allowed one earned run on four hits over 5.2 innings, striking out five batters on 94 pitches. Webb pitched a scoreless inning with two strikeouts and Norby spun the final 2.1 innings with one hit, one earned run and four strikeouts for his first save of the season.

Sanders yielded four earned runs on eight hits over 3.2 frames to take the loss. Anthony Diaz and Ty Thames combined for 4.1 innings of perfect relief out of the Rice bullpen.