It may have taken a little longer than expected, but Duke still emerged from the weekend with the results it wanted.
The Blue Devils continued their stretch of strong play to begin the season, sweeping Rider in a three-game series at Jack Coombs Field Saturday and Sunday. Duke won a pair of tight 11-inning battles in the opening two games—prevailing 1-0 Saturday and 2-1 in the first game of Sunday’s doubleheader—before cruising to an 11-3 victory in the series finale.
The extra-inning affairs marked the first time this year the Blue Devils went to additional frames, and they had players come through in the clutch to earn a couple of walk-off wins. Freshman Evan Dougherty knocked a base hit up the middle to drive in shortstop Kenny Koplove for the game’s first and only run Saturday. Koplove then followed suit with a walk-off single of his own Sunday, plating catcher Mike Rosenfeld with the decisive run and securing the series victory for Duke.
“We’ve talked about it after the Iona game last weekend, that we needed to play in those types of games to get ready for conference play,” head coach Chris Pollard said. “We need to play close games and get comfortable playing in close games, and certainly we got two of those and two extra-inning games."
Sunday’s second game saw the return to the mound of top prospect Michael Matuella for the Blue Devils (9-1). After skipping his turn in the rotation last weekend due to forearm stiffness, the junior right-hander progressed enough during the week to be able to take the mound and start the nightcap.
Matuella’s return was short-lived, however, as he danced out of trouble in a 23-pitch opening frame and did not return for the second inning. He yielded a pair of infield singles to open up the game, but coaxed an infield popup out of Bronco designated hitter Lee Lipinksi to escape a bases-loaded jam and keep Rider (2-5) off the scoreboard.
“It felt good to be out there, especially after not pitching last weekend,” Matuella said. “Obviously I wanted to go more than one inning, but I was on a pitch count, so I understand I have to be ready for Friday night against UNC. But it felt good to be out there.”
Matuella’s brief stint on the mound—combined with the two extra-inning contests preceding it—challenged Duke’s pitching depth as it tried to close out the series sweep. Even though starters Andrew Istler and Bailey Clark turned in excellent performances in their respective games—the duo combined to allow just one earned run and seven hits across 14 innings while striking out 12—the Blue Devil bullpen was taxed for a total of eight innings in the series’ first two games.
Seniors Sarkis Ohanian and Dillon Haviland stepped in and picked up the slack after Matuella departed, hurling 5.2 innings between them. Ohanian (1-0) earned the win and was dominant out of the pen in his most extensive work of the season. The right-hander required just 38 pitches to record nine outs—seven of which came via strikeout—as the Rider hitters were never able to figure out his devastating combination of two-seam fastballs in the low 90s and a sharp slider.
“I’m incredibly proud of our bullpen, in particular Sarkis Ohanian,” Pollard said. “That was as good as Sarkis has thrown in his career here. His stuff was electric. We knew we were going to have to piece that together, we weren’t going to bring back [Nick] Hendrix, [Kenny] Koplove, [Mitch] Stallings or [Conner] Stevens in that game, period, regardless of what happened. So we knew some guys had to step up and they did.”
After struggling at the plate in the first two games, Duke’s offense got back on track and scored runs in five different innings—including four multi-run innings—as it exploded for 11 runs on 13 hits in the finale. Rosenfeld got the scoring started in the second inning, blasting a liner over the third baseman’s head with the bases loaded to put the Blue Devils up 2-0. Duke tacked on two additional runs in the frame thanks to an opposite-field double from freshman Michael Smiciklas, who went 3-for-4 and picked up his first three career RBIs after entering the game with just one hit in nine at-bats.
Eight of the nine Blue Devil starters registered a hit in Sunday’s second game and Smiciklas was the only one not to score a run in an extremely balanced offensive attack. Duke received contributions up and down the lineup throughout the three games—whether it was the late-game heroics of Dougherty and Koplove, the scorching 5-for-8 performance from Rosenfeld in Sunday’s doubleheader or second baseman Andy Perez’s six stolen bases and five hits from the leadoff spot.
“In the second game I felt really comfortable in the box but before that I felt a little cold but those flukey hits, sometimes they trigger it for you,” Rosenfeld said. “We just have to grind—we know that. It’s tough to hit in that weather, the pitchers have a little bit of an advantage. Our pitchers did great, kept us in the ball game. We swung [our bats] and got the runs across when we needed to.”
The Blue Devils will return to the diamond Tuesday for a 4 p.m. home contest against Liberty before opening ACC play Friday against rival No. 14 North Carolina.
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