O’Grady strikes out 10 in 7 innings of scoreless ball

This weekend was the first time Duke fans had a chance to see the Blue Devils’ large freshman class in action. But it was the team’s lone senior who led Duke to a victory in its first series of the 2011 season.

Dennis O’Grady tallied a career-high 10 strikeouts and pitched seven innings of scoreless ball Sunday, giving Duke (2-1) a 7-0 win over Richmond (1-2). After completing a two-out, two-strike, bottom of the ninth comeback 6-5 win in their first game Friday and blowing an early six run lead in their 9-8 loss Saturday, the Blue Devils dominated the series finale from start to finish thanks to a strong outing by the senior righty.

“I thought he mixed pitches really well,” head coach Sean McNally said. “Dennis is a great guy for us to have on Sunday with the series hanging in the balance. He’s a senior, he’s our most consistent pitcher and we know what we’re going to get from him. He’s really aggressive on the mound, and I think our team feeds off that.”

Relying heavily on his breaking ball, O’Grady kept the Richmond lineup off-balance, allowing only five hits and walking two. In his seven innings of work, he struck out two or more batters in five of the innings. The senior didn’t face much of a challenge from the Spiders until the sixth and seventh innings, when he twice had men on first and second with two outs. He ended both threats, though, with strikeouts.

Freshman Mark Lumpa closed out the final two innings by striking out three, allowing one hit and walking none. In all, nine freshmen played for Duke over the opening weekend—including five in the starting lineup on Sunday. McNally said he was pleased with the way they swung the bats and expected that to improve as they get more experience.

Offensively, Duke took an aggressive approach on the base paths and benefited from wild Richmond pitching. With only one extra base hit—a two-run double by Will Piwnica-Worms that broke the game open with two outs in the seventh—the lineup didn’t show much pop. But patience at the plate led to nine walks, one hit-by-pitch and three wild pitches. The Blue Devils scored on two of them.

Duke looked to produce runs Sunday with six stolen base attempts and even an attempted suicide squeeze with a one-run lead in the fifth. The bunt went foul, but Joe Pedevillano, the runner on third, scored on the ensuing wild pitch.

Freshman Andrew Brockett started solidly for Richmond, giving up two earned runs on five hits and two walks over six innings while striking out five. Brockett kept the bats silent the first two innings, but gave up a hard hit single to Pedevillano to start the third. Pedevillano came around to score on a two-out hit by freshman Chris Marconcini, who had the walk-off two-run single Friday.

Brockett lost command of his pitch in the fifth inning, though, allowing two Duke runs on wild pitches, but finished his day with a perfect sixth inning. The Richmond bullpen was not as effective. Three Spider relievers combined to walk seven over the next two innings, including the first four batters of the eighth inning.

“You’d always like to have won on Saturday, but we didn’t play well enough,” McNally said. “I love how our guys responded today. I told our guys, ‘Our goal every weekend is to win the series.’ [It was a] great way to finish the weekend, a good start, and there’s a lot of good baseball to come.”

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