CCU Baseball Notebook: Chants up to No. 19 in national rankings

The Coastal Carolina baseball team was one of the big movers in the rankings as the new national polls came out Monday.

The Chanticleers, still in the glow of a 5-4 win over No. 4 Virginia on Sunday for the program’s first victory over a top-five opponent since 2010, moved up four spots to No. 19 in the latest Baseball America poll while also earning No. 19 in D1Baseball.com’s poll, a No. 20 ranking from PerfectGame.org and a No. 22 ranking from the National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association.

The Chants went 2-1 during the season’s opening weekend with a 17-2 win over Appalachian State before taking a 13-10 loss to a ranked N.C. State team and then picking up that momentous win over Virginia, the reigning national champion.

Coastal Carolina is on the road Tuesday at UNC-Wilmington before returning home for another full weekend at Springs Brooks Stadium for the 17th annual Caravelle Resort’s Baseball at the Beach tournament with Marshall, Liberty, Duke and Ohio State part of the field.

And while the play on the field was highly encouraging for the Chants last weekend, so too was the turnout in the stands as the program drew three of its five largest-ever on-campus regular-season crowds, including a record 3,136 Sunday.

Coach Gary Gilmore and the players shared their appreciation for that support after the win.

“We rise to the occasion,” junior shortstop Michael Paez said. “Sometimes we say, ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter who was out there’ and stuff. It definitely fires us up when we hear our fans going crazy, and there’s just no better feeling than having 3,000 people here cheering us on.”

Said sophomore outfielder Billy Cooke: “It’s unbelievable. You just hear the crowd roaring and you’re just running around the bases, it’s an unbelievable feeling.”

Gilmore asked rhetorically if anyone ever expected to see such a crowd for a regular-season game that didn’t involve Clemson or South Carolina visiting.

Asked how that crowd compared to the bests in his long tenure with the Chants, he had to think back to the 2008 NCAA Regionals that Coastal Carolina hosted.

“There was a crowd we had when we played Alabama and East Carolina back in 2008 when we brought the bleachers in here and packed that old pig we had for a stadium, so to speak. I mean, we packed that place and it was incredible,” he recalled. “[Then-Alabama head coach Jim Wells] called after we beat them, he called me on Sunday when they lost, and he said, ‘We’ve been to LSU, we’ve been to [Texas] A&M, that was the most insane atmosphere.’ I’m pretty sure we had people on top of the dugout and everything. It was insane and everybody was right on top of you.

“But I’m surely not going to discard this crowd. It was a difference-maker at the end of the game. It sped up a hair on them a little bit too. First time out for their guys, they’re nervous just like our guys are. So it was huge. There’s no doubt. That kind of crowd for us, if we can get that on a relatively consistent basis – 2,000-plus people – it will make a huge difference in this program.

Young honored by Big South

Chants junior designated hitter G.K. Young was named the Big South Player of the Week for his efforts in the opening weekend, which included a .500 batting average (6-for-12), an .833 slugging percentage seven RBIs and three runs scored.

Young delivered his first home run of the season Tuesday with a two-run shot in the first inning of Coastal Carolina’s eventual 5-4 win over No. 4 Virginia.

Overall, six Chants finished the opening weekend with batting averages of .300 or better, including Cooke (.455), senior Zach Remillard (.385), sophomore Seth Lancaster (.375), senior Connor Owings (.333) and Paez (.300). Remillard is also slugging .923 to lead the team.

Bilous expected to start on mound

Although he got an inning of relief on Friday to make his much-anticipated collegiate debut, freshman right-hander Jason Bilous is still expected to start Tuesday at UNC-Wilmington.

Last week he said he would be on a 50-pitch limit for his first start as he makes his return from Tommy John surgery, which cost him his senior high school season in Delaware and caused him to slide to the 29th-round in the Major League Baseball First-Year Player Draft last summer.

Now 15 months removed from surgery, he is expected to be a key contributor for the Chants this season. In his debut, he bounced back from two walks to notch two strikeouts while consistently hitting 93 mph on the stadium radar gun in a scoreless inning of work against Appalachian State.

And speaking last week, he said he’s been counting down to this first start.

“I’ve been waiting so long for that. It means the world to me,” he said. “Every day that I couldn’t pitch I was thinking about it, so it’s great to be back on the mound.”

Bilous had said last week that his fastball was sitting between 90-95 mph in practices leading up to the season and that he feels his slider is actually better than before the injury. He threw only one slider Friday – on a strikeout pitch – but he should show off his full arsenal Tuesday.

Not only are the Chants counting on big things from the rookie, but Bilous took a big bet on himself in turning down a $600,000 offer from the Los Angeles Dodgers to follow through on his college commitment. He said he’s trying not to focus on any of that right now, though.

“It’s always in the back of my mind, getting drafted and all that,” he said. “But I try to keep it as far in the back of my mind as possible and just focus on each day by day and focus on the task at hand.”

This story was originally published February 22, 2016 at 9:43 PM with the headline "CCU Baseball Notebook: Chants up to No. 19 in national rankings."