HOLLY SPRINGS — Sean Garbarino allowed just one earned run in seven frames as East Carolina’s club baseball team silenced a Penn State team fighting for its season, 7-1. Tuesday’s win locked down the Pirates’ spot in Thursday’s NCBA World Series championship game.

“We knew they were a good baseball team. The guy who pitched for them (Wednesday) actually took the win from us earlier in the year,” head coach and Washington native Ben Fox said during the post-game press conference. ECU and Penn State split their two regular-season meetings.

“We took away that they were a good baseball team and that we had to bring everything we had to this game.”

This run through the NCBA World Series is ECU’s fourth-straight trip to the peak of club baseball. The Pirates have come up short in the past, but being close to home for this year’s World Series has proven to be an advantage.

Pitching has been ECU’s forte thus far. Tanner Duncan bulldozed Michigan State’s lineup in the team’s first game of the tournament. He scattered three hits, two walks and a hit batter and struck out nine in eight scoreless innings.

Washington native and one-time Pam Pack hurler Hatteras Brooks took the ball for Sunday’s national-championship rematch with Nevada. Brooks worked for seven innings of the 17-0 thumping. He conceded just three hits and a walk as he fanned nine batters.

Winning a championship on Thursday would mean a lot to Fox, Brooks and the entire ECU club. The Pirates have come close in recent years. They have a sort of home-field advantage this time around, and there’s also a looming rebuild coming next year.

Even though Fox will lose many of his key players from this year’s team, he isn’t looking too far ahead. In fact, he isn’t overly concerned with whether or not the Pirates have what it takes to continue their club-baseball dominance.

“I don’t need to motivate my guys whatsoever,” Fox said. “Some of them have been here for four years, some of them two. A lot of them were in the national championship last year. I don’t need to talk to them about next year because they know what this is for them. They know this is their last chance. I think you’ve seen that every game that they’ve played here. They’re playing like this is their last chance, and you’re going to have to take it from them.”