Coastal Carolina baseball accomplishes a major first while securing an NCAA berth
The Coastal Carolina baseball team won its first Sun Belt Conference Championship in school history Sunday with another impressive offensive performance.
Now the Chanticleers await a decision by the NCAA Division I Baseball Committee on Sunday night to see if they are home at Springs Brooks Stadium or on the road in an NCAA regional.
Coastal defeated Troy 11-6 at Louisiana-Lafayette’s Russo Park in the Sun Belt tournament title game to claim the league title in its second season in the league, and scored 42 runs while going unbeaten in its four games.
"[The seniors] have a unique distinction, and they’ll be the only guys who can ever lay claim to this at our school – they won a national championship and they also just won the first championship in the Sun Belt Conference, which is a league I’m very, very proud of. I think it’s one of the better ones in the country,” Coastal head coach Gary Gilmore said.
The Chants (42-17) are ranked 20th in the college baseball RPI and 16 regional hosts will be selected at 8:30 p.m. Eastern Sunday. The full regional fields will be announced beginning at noon Monday, and the team will gather for the announcement at Handleys Pub & Grub in Carolina Forest. Troy (41-19) is also expected to receive an NCAA berth.
“The year we won a national championship we didn’t play at home. We played at home two or three times through Super Regionals and weren’t able to win and get there,” Gilmore said. “It’s more about if they look at us as, ‘Hey man, they’re probably good enough to host but we’re going to send them here,’ and they won’t send us where 2, 3 and 4 are all in the 20s and low 30s RPI-wise, so they give you a chance to possibly advance if you can play well. So much of it is about matchups and whatever. Everyone in that tournament is good.
“I would love it for our fans, but outside of that, I just hope we get a favorable draw.”
Junior Zach Biermann was named the tournament MVP after knocking in 12 runs in CCU’s four games, including three Sunday. Coastal also got back-to-back home runs Sunday for the second time in the tournament from Seth Lancaster and Kevin Woodall Jr., who each tied a tournament record with 10 runs scored for the week.
Both teams started quality pitchers. The Chanticleers still had the services of one of its top two starters, senior Zack Kopeck, who was 5-4 on the season with a 4.26 earned-run average, having allowed 70 hits and 27 walks with 68 strikeouts in 76 innings this season.
Troy started its junior side-arm throwing righthanded closer C.J. Carter, whose impressive statistics include a 3.34 ERA, 86 strikeouts in 64 2/3 innings, a .203 opponent batting average and just 48 hits and 19 walks allowed.
CCU got what it needed from Hopeck, who went 5 2/3 innings and allowed three runs – two earned – eight hits and four walks with two strikeouts.
He allowed a run in the first but got a bases-loaded double play to end the inning and escape further damage, and allowed another run in the fifth and one in the sixth before being pulled. Davie Inman induced a groundout with two runners on in relief of Hopeck.
“I was just looking to give it everything I’ve got for however long I went and contain their speed and ability . . . and not allow them to take the momentum all at once,” said Hopeck, who threw 98 pitches. “There were a lot of 1s on the scoreboard for a while and I think that helped us to not let them gain the momentum and have us keep it with these guys on the bats just tacking on.”
Coastal scored its first four runs on just two hits off Carter, who went three innings and walked three, hit a batter and struck out two. Carter threw 3 1/3 hitless innings in Troy’s tournament opener.
In the second inning, Biermann and Lee Sponseller walked, Preston Chavers hit an RBI single and Matt Beaird had an RBI groundout. In the third, Lancaster walked, Woodall Jr. singled and took second on a throw, and both Biermann and Kieton Rivers hit run-scoring sacrifice flies.
The Chants broke the game open with five runs in the fifth inning, when six of seven batters reached base, with a sacrifice bunt by Rivers the only out.
Lancaster led off the inning with his eighth walk of the tournament to go along with four hits, Woodall doubled and Biermann knocked in both with a double.
Sponseller singled in Biermann following Rivers’ sacrifice, Parker Chavers hit an RBI triple and Keaton Weisz plated Chavers with a single to give the Chants a 9-2 lead.
“We weren’t focused [Saturday],” Gilmore said. “It wasn’t like we weren’t trying, we just weren’t focused. We came focused today. Until we kind of relaxed with a 9-2 lead a teeny bit, we were focused for about five or six innings. You could see it. We fought through two strike counts, drove guys in, we were six-for-six getting scoring guys off third base with less than two outs. That’s huge. That’s how you win.”
The Trojans cut into the lead with a run in the sixth, two in the seventh and one in the eighth on a home run by Cole Prestegard.
But Lancaster hit his conference-leading 19th home run of the season in the ninth inning and Woodall followed with his 19th homer to push the advantage back to five runs. Coastal had gone more than a year without consecutive homers.
“This was a big goal," Biermann said. "It’s our first stepping stone to the postseason. We knew we wanted to win the regular season first and we went out and did that, and coming here we wanted to put on a great performance and win a ring. A lot of us don’t have rings, contrary to some of the older guys who have been here awhile. Now it’s time for our next goal, which is winning a regional and so on and so forth from there.”
Coastal’s games were played in high heat and humidity, with temperatures in the 90s all week in Lafayette, and the Chants also endured nearly four-hour weather delay in the middle of its semifinal win over South Alabama Saturday. Pitchers, hitters and position players were all utilizing rosin for dryness and grip.
“It’s just something you’ve got to push through,” Hopeck said. “It’s part of the atmosphere here and we’re happy we fought through it and got the job done. Anything that’s an extra factor when you go somewhere else, we know what to do.”
This story was originally published May 27, 2018 at 5:24 PM with the headline "Coastal Carolina baseball accomplishes a major first while securing an NCAA berth."