Duke’s offense remained on vacation on the first night of spring break, getting shut out for the second time this season in the Blue Devils’ ACC opener.
Junior Connor Jones tossed eight stellar innings to help No. 14 Virginia breeze past Duke 6-0 Friday at the Durham Bulls Athletic Park. The defending national champions broke the game open on a three-run home run by junior Matt Thaiss in the fifth inning off of Blue Devil starter Bailey Clark, providing more than enough scoring against a floundering Duke offense that has not scored in 15 innings.
The Cavaliers did not get their leadoff runner on base in the top of the fifth for the first time of the game, but sophomore Adam Haseley lined a single into center field and advanced to third on a bloop single by Ernie Clement to start a two-out rally. Thaiss then cleared the bases with a booming home run into the right field bleachers, staking Virginia to a 4-0 lead.
“He didn’t execute a bad pitch. He’s going to have to be in the zone there and it wasn’t really elevated. Thaiss just did a good job of not missing it,” Duke head coach Chris Pollard said. “Between Thaiss and Jones, those two guys beat us tonight.”
Clark kept the game close in the early going, but had to pitch out of jams in nearly every inning before the Cavaliers (10-4, 1-0 in the ACC) finally scored their first run in the fourth.
The leadoff batters in the first two frames both reached on four-pitch walks and freshman Ryan Karstetter started the third with a triple, but he was stranded on third as Clark buckled down to strike out two straight batters and induce a groundout to freshman shortstop Zack Kone.
Virginia finally broke through for a run after another leadoff four-pitch walk in the fourth inning, as Thaiss advanced to second on a wild pitch and scored on a single into right field that bounced just past a diving Ryan Day at second base.
“If you keep putting that guy on first base with nobody out, typically against a good offense, they’ll eventually push him across,” Pollard said. “The thing I like is [Clark] did a good job grinding. He would kind of lose the feel there for a pitch and then he’d get it back, and that’s a sign of his maturation.”
That run was more than Duke (8-6, 0-1) could muster all afternoon, although the Blue Devils’ eight hits were a marked improvement on their three-hit outings in the last two games against Penn State and Toledo. Freshman Jimmy Herron and sophomore Jack Labosky were both 2-for-4 in the middle of the order, but Day hit weak grounders to strand Herron at second twice.
Jones allowed seven hits, but they were all scattered two-out singles, and he never conceded a walk in an effective 108-pitch performance.
“That was a pretty daggone good ballgame the way he located his fastball, and he never had any bad misses,” Pollard said. “We didn’t expand. We didn’t swing at any bad pitches tonight, but he just did a good job of really pitching to the black on both sides of the plate.”
Duke’s biggest threat to score came in the bottom of the ninth against senior southpaw Kevin Dougherty, who gave up a one-out double off the left-field wall to pinch-hitter Daniel Calabretta and threw a wild pitch to move him to third, but escaped the threat with a strikeout and a lazy fly ball to end the game.
“We put some good swings on the baseball tonight. I thought we had a lot better than we had on Wednesday night versus Penn State,” Pollard said. “It felt like we were a lot closer. We just didn’t come up with that big hit when we had opportunities with guys out there.”
The Cavaliers played small-ball to add insurance runs in the sixth and eighth innings, bunting leadoff base-runners to second base before taking an extra base on wild pitches in both frames. Freshman Doak Dozier hit a deep sacrifice fly to plate junior Daniel Pinero in the sixth, and Karstetter smacked a two-out single up the middle to drive in Virginia’s final run. The rookie left fielder went 3-of-4 for the Cavaliers, and Haseley and Clement also delivered multi-hit games.
The Blue Devils will try to even the series against Virginia and get to .500 in conference play Saturday at 2 p.m. at the DBAP.
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