Duke baseball opens critical regular season closing stretch with Sunday doubleheader against Gardner-Webb

After a week filled with final exams, the Blue Devils have one focus as the end of the regular season approaches—making the postseason.

With just two weeks remaining before postseason play begins, Duke gets back on the diamond with a doubleheader against Gardner-Webb Sunday at 1 p.m. at Jack Coombs Field. The Blue Devils will wrap up their nonconference schedule with midweek games Tuesday and Wednesday before tackling Florida State and Pittsburgh in their final two ACC series.

Duke currently sits as one of the First Four Out in Baseball America’s projections for the 64-team NCAA tournament field, and starting the post-finals stretch on the winning side of things would go a long way toward the program trying to make it to the NCAA tournament for the first time since 1961.

“To try to predict how you’re going to come out of the break every year is impossible, but I think what we have going for us different than any year since I’ve been here at Duke is that our guys can look two weeks off into the future and see that the postseason is very attainable—both the ACC and NCAA tournament,” Duke head coach Chris Pollard said. “That ought to serve as great motivation to have really crisp, aggressive, intense practices to get ready for this two-week sprint to the end of the regular season.”

The Blue Devils (25-20) have turned things around in the second half of the season, rolling to 15 wins in their last 22 games after a slow start to the season. To reach the 30-win plateau for the third consecutive season, Duke’s bats will need to continue their second-half improvement—the team has hit .282 in its last 22 games after slumping to a .238 average in its first 23 contests.

Sophomore first baseman Justin Bellinger has led the way for the offensive resurgence, posting a .370/.489/.644 triple-slash line since being inserted into the starting lineup March 27. Bellinger has been joined in the lineup by three freshmen—Zack Kone, Jimmy Herron and Chris Proctor—who have become everyday players as rookies and have the team’s top three batting averages.

For freshmen who are not used to the rigors of a full 50-game season, the reprieve from game action during finals week can come as much-needed relief, and Pollard said he expects his trio to come back fresh starting Sunday.

“We have a lot of guys who will benefit from the rest, especially the freshmen who are playing every day—Kone, Proctor and Herron,” Pollard said. “They should really benefit from this. We haven’t made a lot of changes to our lineup over the last month since we’ve gotten some continuity. So those guys have basically been playing every day.”

“It’s fun for us as coaches because we get to see them relax and enjoy being at the ballpark more without the stress of academics hanging over their heads,” Pollard said. “For them, I think it’s a relief and you can see a collective deep breath when Sunday gets here, and they can say, ‘Okay, now we get to just go play baseball.’”