Blue Devils' errors hand Marshall win

It didn’t take a single hit for Marshall to break open the game and beat the Duke baseball team 8-3 Tuesday.

Marshall (5-12) turned a 3-1 lead into a five-run advantage in the top of the fourth inning without recording a single hit. The Thundering Herd used four walks, an error, a hit batsman and a passed ball to score three runs against the Blue Devils and seal a sloppy game. The two teams combined for 11 walks, six errors, five wild pitches and three passed balls. While both teams played carelessly, the difference was made by Marshall’s ability to take advantage of Duke’s mistakes.

“In this game, unless you have unbelievable offensive numbers, errors are going to be magnified and you cannot give extra outs,” Duke head coach Bill Hillier said. “We’re giving extra outs and our opponents are taking advantage of it.”

Duke (8-17), however, did not take advantage of Marshall’s mistakes, as the Blue Devils left 10 runners on base and struck out seven times. Freshman Kyle Kreick was the offensive leader for Duke with two RBIs, but no player on the team had multiple hits. Freshman Brett Bartles, who was hitting a team-leading .427 coming in to the game, went 0-for-5 from the plate.

Duke’s pitching also struggled, as the Blue Devils were forced to use five pitchers after starter Ryan Sember lasted only two and two-thirds innings. Sember (0-2) received the loss after allowing seven hits and three runs in his second start of the season. Marshall’s Andrew Hancock (1-1) got the win after only giving up one earned run in six innings of work.

“We expected Ryan Sember to throw better,” Hillier said. “He has had a couple surgeries and has been inconsistent the way he has thrown, but I don’t fault him because he competes. He just didn’t have very good stuff today. He had no separation between his fastball and his changeup and I had to get him out of there.”

Duke looked as though it would keep the game tight early on. After giving up two runs in the top of the second inning, sophomore Corey Whiting led off the bottom of the inning by reaching second base on an error by the Marshall leftfielder. Hancock’s attempt to pick off Whiting at second sailed into centerfield and Whiting advanced to third, where he was knocked in by Kreick’s lone hit of the game.

The game slipped away in the fourth inning, however. After an error and two walks, Marshall had the bases loaded with only one out. The Thundering Herd did not knock anyone in, since the Blue Devils gave up the three runs through their own mistakes.