East Carolina moved within one win of reaching the College World Series for the first time, and Oklahoma is on the cusp of making the final eight in the NCAA baseball tournament for the first time since 2010.
No. 8 national seed East Carolina, playing a super regional on its Greenville, North Carolina, campus for the first time, broke open its game against Texas with a five-run eighth inning and won 13-7 Friday.
The Sooners, in the best-of-three supers for the first time since 2013, held off No. 4 Virginia Tech 5-4 for its eight win in nine games.
In late games Friday, Notre Dame played at No. 1 Tennessee and Connecticut at No. 2 Stanford.
East Carolina has never made the College World Series in 31 previous NCAA Tournament appearances. No team has fallen short so many times in the tournament.
The Pirates won for the 22nd time in 23 games. But coach Cliff Godwin hasn't forgotten about 2016, the year his team won Game 1 of its super regional at Texas Tech and then lost the next two.
«I'm taking it day by day,» said Godwin, now 2-6 in four super regional appearances. «This has been a great group for me to be a part of and I'm not going to look too far ahead.»
A record crowd of 5,723 showed up at Clark-LeClair Stadium and made its presence felt.
«I definitely think the score would have been different if we had been playing at Texas,» Godwin said. «I'm thankful we can play at our home field and play in front of all our fans. They've been waiting along time for this, going to back to when I played here.»
Oklahoma jumped on Virginia Tech starter Griffin Green in Blacksburg, Virginia. Green lasted just one inning plus two batters for his shortest start of the season, and OU was up 5-0 in the sixth.
The Hokies tried to come back,
Read more on espn.com
espn.com
