For the first time since 2019, Virginia Tech baseball’s first road trip of the year won’t come as a one-opponent series.
Instead, the Hokies (6-2) head to Greenville, N.C., to play Indiana State (5-3) on Friday, Kent State (1-5) on Saturday and East Carolina (3-5) on Sunday at the Pirates’ Clark-LeClair ballpark in its Keith LeClair Classic.
The 22nd installment of the tournament — meant to honor former ECU head coach Keith Leclair after his death to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in 2006 — is the first to include Tech. The Pirates, a stable contender in the world of college baseball, are 47-16 in the tournament and own 12 titles.
Here’s the full schedule for the round-robin style event:
Friday, February 28, 2025
Game 1: Virginia Tech vs. Indiana State (12:00 p.m.)
Game 2: Kent State at East Carolina (4:30 p.m., ESPN+)
Saturday, March 1, 2025
Game 1: Kent State vs. Virginia Tech (12:00 p.m.)
Game 2: Indiana State at East Carolina (4:30 p.m., ESPN+)
Sunday, March 2, 2025
Game 1: Indiana State vs. Kent State (11:00 a.m.)
Game 2: Virginia Tech at East Carolina (3:30 p.m., ESPN+)
Tech comes in on a three-game high after two wins against UNC Greensboro and a 7-2 midweek victory over JMU on Wednesday. Redshirt senior Sam Tackett, who enters the weekend slashing .500/552/1.000, says that he and the Hokies enjoy the prospect of an irregular three-game road sequence.
“I was on that ’22 VT team, and it’s kinda the same format as a regional, which I think is gonna be pretty sick,” Tackett said after Wednesday’s win over the Dukes. “I always have fun being on the bus and staying in the hotel with the guys. I’m looking forward to that. I like playing at home, sleeping in my own bed, but being able to go down to an environment like ECU is something that I dreamed of as a kid. It’s gonna be a good weekend for us.”
It starts with Indiana State on Friday, who ranks 74th in the nation in the Massey Ratings — 28 spots behind the Hokies but higher than the rest of their LeClair Classic foes. The Sycamores’ 5-3 start featured wins against Northeastern, Florida Gulf Coast and Wagner twice (36-6 and 16-6).
The defending Missouri Valley Conference regular-season champions under coach Tracy Archuleta, the Sycamores are a speedy team with a couple stars who’ve inflicted pain this season. They’re 10-for-12 on stolen base attempts compared to Tech’s 4-of-9. They have three players — Eli Gipson, Carter Beck, Thomas Emerich — with multiple stolen bases. Jared Davis is the only Hokie that can claim that, but he’s 2-for-5 on steal attempts. (It should be said that he has a way of sliding off the bag when he’s already safe.)
Freshman third baseman Jeremy Martinez has a 1.067 OPS through seven games with four of his nine hits going for extra bases. Righty Ryan Karst, who the Sycamores started their last two Fridays, carries a 8.44 ERA and has six walks in 20 batters faced.
Don’t be surprised if a different arm, like the Ohio Valley Conference Freshman of the Year Grant Parsons, tosses opposite to Brett Renfrow on Friday.
According to the Massey Ratings, Kent State (No. 227) is shaping up to be Tech’s softest matchup of the entire season. Bucknell (No. 203) is the only previous opponent that comes anywhere close to that ranking. The Golden Flashes have just one win, a 4-2 tilt against Eastern Kentucky to open their season. Since then, they’ve suffered losses to South Alabama, Southern Illinois and a sweep to Mercer.
They slash just .276/.373/.402 to Tech’s .364/.455/.608, but their offensive struggles pale in comparison to their pitching woes. Batters are hitting .337 against Kent State arms — and its probable starter against the Hokies, lefty Eric Chalus (0-2), gave up nine hits and six earned runs over four innings against Mercer last Saturday. The senior has more earned runs (10) than strikeouts (nine) this year.
Kent State right fielder Jake Casey (.474/.630/.842) has impressed this year at the two hole. He and the Golden Flashes offense are likely to see Tech freshman Jake Marciano (2-0) riding a hot streak after his seven-strikeout, one-hit day against UNCG last weekend.
Then there’s the weekend finale, a matchup that was supposed to be the big one.
ECU is 3-5 — not the start it was looking for after finishing 46-17 last year and going 3-2 in the NCAA regional it hosted. Three of the Pirates’ losses came at the hands of No. 6 North Carolina, a team that beat Tech 17-8 over a weekend series last April.
Losses against George Mason and Campbell blotted ECU’s record as well — it’s fallen to No. 112 on the Massey Rankings after sitting at No. 28 in the preseason. The Pirates were the overwhelming favorite to win the American Athletic Conference after doing so in 2024.
Still, their stumble against the Tar Heels wasn’t all bad. ECU’s bullpen held UNC to just one hit across the final four innings of Game 1, then four hits and one earned run in the last five frames of Game 3. The Pirates’ bats rebounded after a five-hit Saturday shutout, finding 18 knocks across the next two games. The six runs ECU plated in Sunday’s 11-6 loss are the second-most any team has hung on the 9-0 Tar Heels this season.
ECU freshman outfielder and Haymarket, Va., native Alex Peltier is batting a team-high .267 with a .333 on-base percentage. Perfect Games’ 24th-ranked high school prospect in the Commonwealth last year will likely duel against a familiar face on Sunday: Freshman Logan Eisenreich (2.08 ERA), who was Peltier’s teammate for four years at Paul VI and has carved out a spot as Tech’s Game 3 starter. The Hokies’ righty was 18th in Perfect Games’ ranking and is coming off a solid performance.
Tech’s weekend at ECU may not be as threatening as it seemed preseason, but it’ll go a long way as a litmus test for a team that finished 10-13 at away or neutral sites in 2024.
The Keith LeClair Classic kicks off at noon ET Friday as the Hokies take on Indiana State. Evan Hughes and Giovanni Heater have the radio coverage on the Virginia Tech Sports Network throughout the weekend. The Hokies’ Sunday game vs. ECU will be streamed on ESPN+.