The road wasn’t very kind to the Blue Devils, but fortunately they are returning home.
After getting swept in a three-game series by Boston College this weekend, Duke returns to Durham to host Campbell Tuesday evening at Jack Coombs Stadium with first pitch slated for 6 p.m. The weekend series against the Eagles—played in Newark, Del., due to extreme weather accumulation in the northeast—followed a 10-game homestand in which the Blue Devils posted a 7-3 ledger.
Duke was not able to translate its home success to road victories, but it was competitive in each of the three games. Uncharacteristically sloppy defense and a bit of wildness on the mound couldn’t overcome bats that were just a bit too sluggish in the harsh weather and dropped the Blue Devils to four games under .500 in ACC play.
“Overall, we didn’t play the type of consistent defense we had played until this past weekend, and we gave a Boston College team that was playing well extra offense, and they did a good job of taking advantage of it,” head coach Chris Pollard said on the weekly Duke Baseball Show. “Friday, the seven walks was the most we had all year. It’s not a train wreck, per se, but it is a fender bender and you don’t want to make a habit of doing that. We gave them extra offense with that and some plays that we would usually make.”
If Duke (19-9) is to move past the weekend and pick up its 20th victory of the season, it will have to do so against a Camel squad that has followed a similar season trajectory to the Blue Devils this year. Campbell (20-8) is also coming off the wrong end of a weekend sweep—scoring just five runs in three losses to Radford—but otherwise has enjoyed a fine season in head coach Justin Haire’s first year at the helm.
The strength of Haire’s team lies with a stacked lineup that is averaging nearly six runs per game and bats a strong .295 overall. The Camels feature six regulars hitting better than .300—all of whom are upperclassmen—with four of those six posting on-base percentages higher than .400 to go along with it.
The big bopper for Campbell is junior masher Cole Hallum, a Bakersfield College transfer who ranks third in the country with nine homers. Hallum’s 32 RBIs and .683 slugging percentage are both in the top 30 in the nation, but it is the table-setters that hit before him in the lineup who make everything go for the Camels. Campbell likes to push the issue on the basepaths—ranking third in the country with 67 stolen bases—has three speedsters who have racked up at least 10 thefts without being caught more than twice. One of those speedsters is junior Cedric Mullins—a top all-around threat in the outfield who boasts a .321/.353/.536 slash line at the plate and is the team leader in runs scored, triples and extra-base hits.
Although Campbell poses a strong threat in the batter's box, the strength of the Duke team for most of the season has been a consistent and effective pitching staff. Senior Sarkis Ohanian and freshman Mitch Stallings have repeatedly turned in standout performances for Pollard out of the bullpen all year long—with both hurlers logging more than 20 innings and recording an ERA less than 1.60 during the first half of the season.
This weekend was no different, with Pollard turning to his pair of relief aces in Saturday’s contest and then again in Sunday’s finale. Ohanian and Stallings combined to throw 6.2 dominant innings in relief of starter Luke Whitten Sunday, fanning seven and not yielding an earned run even after both threw 1.1 frames a day earlier. In midweek games, teams typically piece innings together with an array of relievers, elevating the need for shutdown performances like Ohanian and Stalling’s against the dangerous Camel lineup.
“[Stallings] is tough. He’s resilient, and he has an arm that does respond quickly. He and Sarkis both [do], which makes them guys that are very well-suited to pitch in the bullpen,” Pollard said. “You need guys in the pen that can bounce back and pitch on a day’s rest and sometimes on no rest. That’s one of the reasons we have those guys in those roles. I can’t say enough about how well those guys are doing to bridge gaps and keep us in games late.”
With the duo of Ohanian and Stallings having logged significant innings during the weekend, it’s unclear if they will be available out of the pen Tuesday against the Camels. That gives the rest of the Blue Devils a real opportunity—both on the mound and at the plate—to step up and right the ship as Duke crosses the halfway juncture on its schedule.
“Now we’ve been punched in the mouth, really for the first time all year,” Pollard said. “This will be a great opportunity for us tomorrow to see how we respond to that.”
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