Duke baseball opens NCAA Tournament play Friday

Oklahoma State first up

The NCAA managed to conduct its baseball tournament without any participation from Duke for years; decades, actually. Well, more than six decades is generations.

Now, going to the tourny is a habit for Duke baseball. Seven times in nine years.

Duke has advanced to the Super Regionals three times, winning one game all three times but failing to get that second win and that ticket to Omaha all three times.

In fact, Duke has played five games in those three Super Regionals in which a win would have kept alive the season, once against Texas Tech, twice against Vanderbilt, twice against Virginia.

Duke calls taking that next step “kicking in the door.”

Is this the year Duke kicks in the door?

First, they’ll have to get out of Athens, Georgia with their season alive.

The SEC has long been considered the best conference for college baseball, with the ACC a clear second.

The gap may be growing. Eight of this season’s 16 hosts are SEC squads. The ACC has three, North Carolina, Clemson and Florida State. Regular season champions Georgia Tech didn’t make the cut, a telling indictment of the NCAA’s perception of the ACC.

Even worse, six of the top eight seeds are SEC schools. These are the schools that would host a Super Regional if they advance that far.

North Carolina and Oregon State are the other two.

The SEC had 13 teams selected. That’s a record. The ACC had nine, the Big 12 eight.

Another data point. Georgia finished fifth in the SEC regular season and lost their only game in the conference tournament, 3-2 to Oklahoma.

And they’re the number seven national seed.

Yikes!!

Fun fact. You might recall Andrew Fischer. He played third base for Duke two years ago, set a school record for home runs by a freshman (11) and made assorted all-freshman teams.

He transferred to Ole Miss after his freshman season. Money talks. It talked even louder when Tennessee lured Fischer away from their conference foes for this season.

Now a first baseman Fischer is projected as a first-round draft pick this year.

Anyway.

Duke baseball does have one positive experience at Georgia, although it took place long before any of today’s players were in college.

Duke was seeded second in 2018. Troy was third, Campbell fourth. Duke lost to Troy 6-0 and trailed Campbell 8-1 at one point in an elimination game. A providential rain delay enabled Duke to hit reset, score 11 runs in the ninth and stay alive with a 16-8 victory.

Duke defeated Troy 15-6 and then swept Georgia 8-5 and 8-4 to advance to Lubbock and Texas Tech.

This year?