CCU Baseball Notebook: Chants have to get creative with pitching at this point

Speaking shortly after his team kept its season alive with a 7-5 win over Texas Tech on Thursday night, Coastal Carolina baseball coach Gary Gilmore wasn’t quite ready to name a starting pitcher for the Chanticleers’ College World Series rematch Friday evening with TCU.

Though he knows he might have a struggle keeping junior ace Andrew Beckwith off that mound.

“We’ll see. His make-up is I may have to fight him to not pitch him, but we may have to try to figure out how to steal two or three innings, four innings, five innings, something before we have to go to him if we can because none of the guys I have in the bullpen have really worked the back end of games either,” Gilmore said. “So it will be an interesting thing. [Pitching coach Drew] Thomas and I will sit down and figure out [Friday morning].”

Beckwith, of course, threw a complete-game in Coastal Carolina’s 2-1 win over top-seeded Florida to start this week.

The Chants (51-17) are now 2-1 in their first College World Series appearance and need to defeat TCU (49-16) on Friday night (8 p.m. ET on ESPN) and again Saturday to advance to the best-of-three championship series with the winner from the other bracket.

Coastal Carolina has leaned heavily on its top two starting pitchers – Beckwith and senior Alex Cunningham – down the stretch of this season and prevailed past Texas Tech on Thursday night thanks to a brilliant relief effort from its two key cogs in the bullpen.

With top relievers Mike Morrison and Bobby Holmes likely entirely unavailable Friday, the Chants are going to have to piece together their pitching as best they can.

Beckwith, who is 13-1 with a 2.02 ERA, believes he can go, but an official decision is still pending.

“Four days rest, I should be ready to go,” he said, before adding, “... I haven’t really talked to Coach Thomas about what the plan is.”

Another look at TCU

After losing to TCU, 6-1, on Tuesday, the Chants will be looking for a much better performance all around.

Gilmore made some lineup switches Thursday – having Anthony Marks and Michael Paez flip spots at the top of the order, having Connor Owings and Zach Remillard flip spots behind them, and starting David Parrett at catcher – and the Chants broke out for seven runs after scoring only three total over their first two games of the week.

It’s not clear who TCU will pitch Friday, but if the NCAA super regionals are any indication it could be junior right-hander Mitchell Traver (1-2, 3.00 ERA in six starts). He started the Horned Frogs’ second super regional game against Texas A&M, allowing five runs (three earned) on six hits and two walks in 5 2/3 innings.

Unless they too want to bring back their Sunday pitcher, freshman righty Jared Janczak (7-3, 2.37).

Of course, they have more options than the Chants at this point, having not played since that game Tuesday night.

“They’re a great team. They’re a whole lot like [Texas Tech]. They have a fantastic lineup and they’ve just got arm after arm after arm,” Gilmore said. “So it’s going to be a tough battle for us, but in the game of baseball it’s amazing, you can boot a ball, you can do this, that can happen, whatever. It’s about who plays best. They may have us outgunned in personnel at this moment in time because they didn’t have to play, but if we run one or two guys out there and can find a way to win, we’ll be right there.”

Etc.

Again, the Chants and TCU are two of four teams left competing for the national championship, along with Oklahoma State and Arizona on the other side of the bracket. ...

The Chants are now 4-0 this postseason against top-eight national seeds, including two wins over No. 8 LSU in the super regionals and wins over No. 1 Florida and No. 5 Texas Tech in the College World Series.

This story was originally published June 24, 2016 at 7:58 AM with the headline "CCU Baseball Notebook: Chants have to get creative with pitching at this point."