If the NCAA super regional in Chapel Hill between East Carolina and North Carolina is anything like this past weekend's regional in Greenville, area baseball fans are in for a treat.

East Carolina's baseball team had to wait 16 hours to play Binghamton in the NCAA regional at Clark-LeClair Stadium. And the top-seeded Pirates (43-17) came out swinging on Saturday morning, outscoring the fourth-seeded Bearcats 11-7 to win their opener in the four-team regional.

East Carolina tried mightily to play its opening game at the NCAA regional baseball tournament in Greenville on Friday night.

But when rain came one more time at 10:30 p.m., the umpires finally decided to postpone the originally scheduled 7 p.m. game between the top-seeded Pirates and fourth-seeded Binghamton until today at 10 a.m.

A late afternoon thunderstorm and a subsequent one hour, 18-minute rain delay in the South Caroilna-George Mason game caused the start of host East Carolina's game to be delayed on Friday.

East Carolina fans might want to keep an eye on two conference tournaments this week -- the Conference USA and the SEC.

The word at the ACC Tournament was that the 16th regional spot could come down to the Pirates and the Gamecocks, with this week's showing in their respective league tournaments the decider. Whichever team is awarded a regional on Sunday by the NCAA, the other is likely to be the No. 2 seed at the same site.

East Carolina's strong finish to the regular season -- a 9-1 run that catapulted the Pirates to their first Conference USA regular-season title since 2004 -- has pushed ECU to No. 15 in this week's Baseball America poll and in the top 18 in all five national polls.

It also put the Pirates in position to make a strong case to be one of the 16 NCAA regional hosts with a strong run in the C-USA Tournament, which starts Wednesday at Hattiesburg, Miss.