Duke defeated Coastal Carolina 12-3 Monday evening in Conway to advance to their third Super Regional in the last five NCAA baseball tournaments.
The Blue Devils never trailed and in fact were one strike away from a shutout.
The list of heroes was long for Duke but if this was hockey and I had a vote, the first star would have been starter Alex Gow. Gow is a grad student who transferred to Duke from Kenyon College. That’s a D-3 school in Ohio. They do not give athletic scholarships. They play in the North Coast Athletic Conference against such opponents as Hiram, Wabash and Oberlin.
Yet, here was Alex Gow taking the ball on two days rest, on the road, in a winner-take all game against one of the nation’s most potent offenses, in front of a loud, hostile crowd.
And shutting them out for four innings, one hit, three walks and seven strikeouts. Gow worked out of a two-on, no-out jam in the fourth before taking a well-earned rest.
No, this wasn’t Nolan Ryan throwing 200 pitches. But Gow did what he was tasked to do. He got Duke to its bullpen with a lead.
MJ Metz gave Duke that early lead with a home run to lead off the second. Metz is a grad-student transfer from Trinity College in Texas. It’s a D-3 school in San Antonio. Their opponents include Schreiner University and Texas Lutheran,
Metz has 17 home runs this season.
Alex Stone hit a 3-run blast in the bottom of the third, Gow got out of that spot of bother in the fourth and Duke slowly, methodically ground down a Coastal pitching staff exhausted from its fifth game in four days. A two-run single by Luke Storm in the fourth made it 6-0, a solo shot by Giovanni DiGiacomo in the fifth made it 7-0.
Coastal has some potent bats, so maybe 7-0 wasn’t too big an ask. But it became 11-0 after Duke put up a four-spot in the sixth and without anything bigger than a lead-off double by Damon Lux. Three singles, two walks and a stolen base later and it was 11-0.
Metz drove in two of those runs with a single.
Meanwhile, Duke’s bullpen wasn’t giving Coastal a glimmer of hope. Charlie Beilenson gave Duke two scoreless innings, Fran Oschell III another.
Neither allowed a base-runner.
Beilenson is a grad-student transfer from Brown, an Ivy-League school that doesn’t give non-need-based-athletic scholarships either.
Beilenson pitched in all four of Duke’s games this weekend, 7.1 innings total. He’s appeared in 36 games this season, a school record.
Without belaboring the point, Duke seems to have a knack for finding players.
The Blue Devils added another run in the eighth. Coastal got three runs in the ninth after Aaron Beasley had Graham Brown 2-2 with two outs. But Brown and Dean Mihos doubled in a run and two runs respectively and the shut-out ended, a nice show of combativeness by the host team which delayed the inevitable just a few minutes.
Not many people picked Duke to come out of this regional. In fact, more than a few predictions had Duke taking two quick losses and going home early.
During May’s slump Chris Pollard used phrases like “gassed,” “running on fumes,” and “we’ll have to battle through it.” But he also referenced his team’s resiliency, its toughness, its competitiveness and most of all its cohesion.
That’s how you battle through it. Underestimate this team at your peril.
Super Regional in Charlottesville.
Jim, Thank you as ever for your insightful and granular takes on Duke's games. Zooming out just a little, I am interested in your prognostic take on Duke's prospects. Also, the culture of the team seems to be very positive. Is this true? Thanks!
Given the state of the pitching staff, I was prepared to be on the wrong side of an 11-0 game, so much so that I must cop to bailing out for some errands after Duke made it 6-0 rather than risk enduring a reversal. I'm still getting used to so many of the stats coming from one-year players, but all credit to Chris Pollard for playing the game astutely, and to the players for seizing their opportunity on the big stage.