{"id":244516,"date":"2026-04-11T02:17:15","date_gmt":"2026-04-11T02:17:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/244516\/"},"modified":"2026-04-11T02:17:15","modified_gmt":"2026-04-11T02:17:15","slug":"pirates-drop-series-opener-at-north-texas-5-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/244516\/","title":{"rendered":"Pirates Drop Series Opener At North Texas, 5-1"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Denton, Texas \u2013\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/ecupirates.com\/sports\/softball\/roster\/anna-sawyer\/14087\" rel=\"smarttag nofollow noopener\" rev=\"14087\" target=\"_blank\">Anna Sawyer<\/a> went 3-for-4 at the plate including hitting a home run but East Carolina fell\u00a0to North Texas, 5-1, on Friday evening in the series opener between the two teams at Lovelace Stadium.<\/p>\n<p>Sawyer&#8217;s solo shot in the top of the sixth marked the first home run for the Pirates (24-19, 8-8 American) in nearly two weeks with the last one coming on Mar. 28 against UAB.<\/p>\n<p>Defensive miscues from ECU in the first inning gave North Texas an early 1-0 lead but <a href=\"https:\/\/ecupirates.com\/sports\/softball\/roster\/julia-apostolakos\/14090\" rel=\"smarttag nofollow noopener\" rev=\"14090\" target=\"_blank\">Julia Apostolakos<\/a> and North Texas&#8217; Anneca Anderson entered into a pitchers&#8217; duel as both teams combined for just four hits over the next three and a half innings.<\/p>\n<p>The Mean Green&#8217;s offense blew the game open in the bottom of the fifth with an RBI double, followed by an RBI single and then a two-run homer to make the score 5-0 in favor of the home team.<\/p>\n<p>ECU prevented the shut out on Sawyer&#8217;s home run in the top of the sixth and threatened to make a rally with the bases loaded with two outs but all three runners were left on.<\/p>\n<p>Apostolakos (12-8) tossed two strikeouts in the loss while Anderson (11-4) threw five strikeouts in the win.<\/p>\n<p>Up Next<br \/>&#13;<br \/>\nThe Pirates will look to bounce back and win the series in tomorrow&#8217;s doubleheader with North Texas as the first game is set to start at noon on ESPN+.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Denton, Texas \u2013\u00a0Anna Sawyer went 3-for-4 at the plate including hitting a home run but East Carolina fell\u00a0to&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":244517,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-244516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244516\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/244517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}