Last week, a Marketplace employee ribbed a couple Duke baseball players-telling them that North Carolina, which lost in the College World Series last year and is 7-0 this season, is the best team in the nation.
After learning of Duke's record, though, he admitted he was proud of the Blue Devils.
While Duke may not be a championship-caliber team yet, it is showing that the gap between the Blue Devils and their Tobacco Road rivals may not be as wide as in previous years. Duke has raced out to a 9-1 start this season, after finishing last year 15-40.
After losing their first game Sunday, the Blue Devils look to return to their winning ways this afternoon at 3 p.m. against North Carolina A&T (1-3) at Jack Coombs Field.
"We certainly believed it was possible," head coach Sean McNally said of starting the 2007 campaign with nine wins in 10 games. "We have to play a single day at a time."
The Blue Devils have been playing with a lot of energy, McNally said-and the box scores show it. Duke is hitting .370, 100 points better than last season. The team ERA has fallen from 7.04 in 2006 to 3.24 through the first 10 games of 2007. And the Blue Devils are playing better defensively, with their fielding percentage rising from .959 to .969.
Duke has also improved in categories that are not visible on the stat sheets, such as situational hitting and clutch plays. These two facets have combined to give the Blue Devils some important victories-most notably Ryan McCurdy's walk-off groundout to beat Washington Friday. McCurdy's grounder to the right side allowed Gabriel Saade to score from second and gave the Blue Devils their eighth straight win.
"We always knew we had it within us [to play like this]," pitcher Andrew Wolcott said. "We just had to put the pieces together."
Those pieces fell apart somewhat Sunday, as Duke endured its first loss of the season to East Carolina. The consistent defense and strong pitching of the first nine games were absent, and Duke lost 11-4 to a solid Pirate team.
"We need to get back on track," Wolcott said. "We have to play within ourselves."
Against North Carolina A&T, Duke will need to implement the strategies that have been so successful this season-playing good defense and throwing strikes. Freshman pitcher Michael Ness will get the first start of his career against a potentially troublesome Aggies squad.
North Carolina A&T has played some "really good games," McNally said. The Aggies hung in with N.C. State (8-1), falling 5-3 in the season opener. They are coming off of a three-game series in which they took one game from Cincinnati (3-5).
"We're looking to play good defense and swing the bats," McNally said. "It'll be good to be back in the friendly confines of Jack Coombs Field, and hopefully we'll get a win."
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