A great season with a not-so-great ending.
Virginia’s 12-2 win over Duke Sunday afternoon sends the Cavaliers to the College World Series, while ending Duke’s season one win away from Omaha.
Virginia came into the Super Regional at or near the top of numerous NCAA offensive statistics. Meanwhile, Duke head coach Chris Pollard and pitching coach Brady Kirkpatrick have spent the season playing mix-and-match with a pitching staff battered by season-ending injuries. Pollard told the media a month ago that his team was “gassed” and Duke probably hit the figurative wall after winning the first game in Charlottesville.
Which isn’t to take away anything from the Cavaliers. There’s a reason they were hosting as a number-seven national seed. They are good, really really good, good enough to do some serious damage in Omaha next week.
Given Virginia’s potent bats and the precarious state of Duke’s pitching Duke needed to execute its pitches at a high level. This especially was the case with Duke’s starters, whose job is to get to the bullpen with a chance to win.
This didn’t happen, Saturday or Sunday. And truth be told, the bullpen wasn’t all that good, either.
Duke started Ryan Higgins in the winner-take-all third game. Higgins is a promising sophomore who hadn’t pitched since May 20 and hadn’t pitched more than 1.2 innings since May 9. It wasn’t a choice one would make were better options available.
None were.
Higgins got out of a two-on, no-out jam in the first. But he was playing with fire and Duke got burned in the second. A double and a walk brought Charlie Beilenson out of the bullpen. Beilenson was lit up Friday and didn’t fare much better Sunday, at least at the beginning. Four singles mixed in with a couple of walks and Duke was heading into the third staring up on the wrong end of a 5-0 hole.
Meanwhile, Virginia starter Brian Edgington was demonstrating that you don’t have to have an over-powering fastball to get outs in the college game. An assortment of breaking balls and change-ups had Duke swinging too early, swinging too late, swinging at pitches in the dirt, one off-balance batter after another.
He ended up striking out 11 Blue Devils.
Still, like Saturday’s game, Duke gave their faithful one brief glimmer of hope. Beilenson settled down and held Virginia scoreless in the third and fourth. Duke got into a jam in the fifth but Virginia left the bases loaded.
Andrew Fischer singled with one out in the top of the sixth and Jay Beshears followed with his 15th home run of the season, making it 5-2.
Maybe that was a turning point. Maybe Duke’s bullpen could shut down Virginia, maybe Duke had figured out Edgington.
It wasn’t to be. Just like Saturday Virginia responded to a big Duke inning with a bigger inning of their own. Ethan Anderson did most of the damage with a three-run blast in the bottom of the sixth.
By the time the carnage was over it was 9-2 and it was all over but the shouting, as the broadcasters used to say back in the day.
And yes, maybe Duke should have gone against the grain and found a way to get Fran Oschell III and/or James Tallon into the game earlier, much earlier. Having an elite closer doesn’t do you much good when you’re 10 runs behind.
Then again, dance with who brung you.
I suspect a lot of us were seduced by that 79 percent stat we saw ad infinitum in game one. But most of us knew that there was a realistic chance that Duke could win game one and still be one of those 21 percenters who won the first game of the Super Regional and lost the final two.
Duke has had five chances to go to Omaha with a win under Pollard, one in 2018, two in 2019 and two in 2023 and has gone 0-5.
But I don’t think the narrative should be “Duke can’t win the big one.” It should be something more along the lines of “what a great bounce-back season by a gritty Blue Devil team.” Duke set a team record for home runs in a season (110), Tallon set a school record for saves with 12, Beilenson established a school record with 39 appearances. Alex Stone had a 30-game hitting streak, while MJ Metz provided the tournament’s feel-good story.
Duke didn’t make the NCAA Tournament last season. They didn’t even make the 12-team ACC Tournament. Nobody projected them in the NCAAs when the season began and no one had them in when April began and no one had them getting out of the Conway Regional going into the NCAAs on a four-game losing streak.
And yet, there they were, one win away from the CWS. Or perhaps, one quality starter away. That’s got to be priority 1 going into the off-season, some combination of finding and/or developing better starting pitching, which includes monitoring a lot of rehab and recovery. Virginia got 22.2 innings out its starters in the Super Regional. Duke got 7.1. Elite program versus almost-elite program.
That’s not all of course. Duke has lots of juniors and Mooney is a draft-eligible sophomore. Decisions will have to be made. The transfer portal will giveth and the transfer portal will takeith away. Freshmen will have to be evaluated and integrated.
But that’s down the road. Right now we’re looking at the end of a special season. The final destination may not have been what we were hoping for but the journey was way cool.
I'm going to choose to memory bank the Conway regional surprise and release the 26-6 c-ville weekend into the ether.
My biggest regret about yesterday's loss is that it means we likely won't get some analytics kid to quantify just how crazy Pollard had to get with his pitching staff over the course of a journey to Omaha. I don't follow college baseball closely enough to make definitive statements about much of anything, but for me this was an experience unto its own, and I respect him for protecting his arms if that what he was doing.
In many ways, this team and season embodies non-rev sports at Duke. Teams are never going to be built for sure-fire success, but when coaches who understand what makes Duke unique dial in their formula, sometimes a collection of high-character kids can make special things happen when you least expect it.
Pollard seems to have proof-of-concept for using Fuqua to plug holes and provide leadership vs. forcing underclassmen into too many situations that could hurt their development. I'm excited to see how he builds on this season, and both in roster construction and player development.
Fingers are crossed that baseball gets a little more love from the sports marketing department, too.
Thanks for terrific coverage all season, Jim!!!