With its NCAA tournament hopes all but dashed after a disappointing showing in the first half of ACC play, Duke traveled to Louisville Friday hoping to salvage some good out of what has been a frustrating season.
After a thrilling win in the series opener, however, the Blue Devils came crashing back to reality in the second and third games.
The Blue Devils shocked the No. 2 Cardinals 5-3 Friday night at Jim Patterson Stadium in Louisville, Ky., before dropping the other two games of the series Saturday and Sunday, falling 7-5 and 10-0, respectively. Duke sophomores Griffin Conine and Jimmy Herron were the heroes in Friday’s game, combining to score or drive in four of the Blue Devils' five runs against Louisville star Brendan McKay, a potential top pick in this June’s MLB draft. Zack Kone, Conine’s classmate, led a late charge in Saturday’s game to cut the Cardinals’ lead to two, but could not push Duke over the top.
“Our team competed really well,” Blue Devil head coach Chris Pollard told GoDuke.com after Saturday's game. “We played really good defense, competed well in the batter’s box. I’m especially pleased by the way we grinded out at-bats.”
On Sunday, however, Duke (21-21, 8-13 in the ACC) was overmatched in every facet of the game. Starter Ryan Day suffered his third loss of the season, giving up five earned runs in 6 1/3 innings pitched, and the Blue Devils managed just five hits off Louisville pitchers Nick Bennett and Riley Thompson.
Friday night’s contest became an instant highlight of the season for a Duke team that has struggled to find many positives. Entering the game, Pollard had voiced optimism that his team could pull a surprise upset against the best team in the ACC a week after the Blue Devils lost their series against lowly Boston College.
He turned to junior Mitch Stallings to try to tame one of the best offenses in the country, and the southpaw responded with a stellar seven innings, giving up just three runs on his way to his fourth win of the season. Although he had more walks than strikeouts, the Duke defense picked up its pitcher in one of its most resounding wins of the season.
“The fun part to me was watching a true competitor embrace the moment,” Pollard told GoDuke.com after the game. “He’s going head-to-head against the best player in college baseball and he really relished it and didn’t back away from it. He’ll tell you he didn’t have his best performance, but he kept making pitches.”
The Blue Devils tagged McKay for five earned runs spread across six innings, the most runs he has given up in his career and more than he allowed in his past three starts combined. Previously, his season high for runs surrendered was three in seven innings against N.C. State.
McKay was also coming off a dazzling performance against Georgia Tech in which he went eight innings, gave up no runs and struck out eight batters.
“The key was we had McKay up around 50 pitches after two innings,” Pollard said. “We had such great at bats. We really extended at bats all day long, forced their pitchers into a lot of deep counts. We didn’t miss fastballs. I thought it was as locked in a performance as we’ve had all year."
Duke was humming in the batter’s box early Friday, as Herron set the tone by stealing home in the top of the first inning. The rest of the offense added to the lead in the second, when the Blue Devils jumped ahead 3-0 on an RBI triple from Chris Proctor and a single from Herron. Louisville (33-6, 17-4) cut the deficit to one on a two-run homer in the fourth inning, but Conine answered in the fifth with a two-run bomb of his own to give Duke all the space it needed.
Saturday’s game started on an entirely different note for the Blue Devils. Junior starter James Ziemba did not make it past the second inning, giving up seven earned runs on seven hits before handing the ball to Chris McGrath. The bullpen held steady for seven innings, as Louisville could not manage a run off the trio of McGrath, freshman Matt Mervis and graduate student Nick Hendrix.
“Those guys pitched phenomenal, held the game right where it was—can’t say enough good things about Chris McGrath,” Pollard said. “Nick Hendrix did an incredible job to come in and get off us the field right there in a two-run ballgame.”
Despite trailing early by a seven-run deficit, Duke's offense continued to battle in at-bats and broke through in the fourth inning on a single from freshman Erikson Nichols. Herron was hit by a pitch with the bases loaded to force in a run, and Kone followed with a two-run single to cut the gap to three runs. Kone added another run on a single in the sixth, but the Blue Devils could manage nothing else against the back end of the Cardinals’ bullpen.
After two surprisingly competitive games to start the series, Duke had reason to be hopeful for a series victory in the finale Sunday. Day had made three quality starts in a row and was two weeks removed from an eight-inning shutdown performance against Miami. A win would have given the Blue Devils their first ACC series win since the first weekend of conference play against Virginia Tech. But with the opportunity at their fingertips, everything went wrong.
Day was chased in the seventh inning and handed the ball to Hendrix, who recorded just one out while giving up another two runs. Duke would need three more pitchers to finish off the inning, and when the dust settled, a three-run deficit had exploded into a 10-run lead for the Cardinals to extinguish the Blue Devils' hopes of winning the series.
Duke is back in action Wednesday against Presbyterian before hitting the road for another weekend series against Notre Dame.
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