Duke baseball finishes season with series win against Wake Forest

Redshirt senior Mike Rosenfeld finished out his Duke career with a couple of RBIs in Saturday's win.
Redshirt senior Mike Rosenfeld finished out his Duke career with a couple of RBIs in Saturday's win.

The Blue Devils capped a 30-win campaign with their first come-from-behind series victory in their final outing of the regular season.

Duke went 2-1 in its series against Wake Forest, dropping the opener Thursday 3-1 only to turn around and win 7-0 Friday and 8-1 Saturday to claim the series victory at Jack Coombs Stadium.

To regroup and claim the series after the Thursday loss, the Blue Devils relied on a combination of experienced veterans and freshman potential.

"We had never lost a Friday and then come back and won Saturday-Sunday, and we talked about that a couple times this year," Duke redshirt senior captain Mike Rosenfeld said. "We always tried to boost the morale and get it done but never quite could, so for us to do it on a last series was really special against a good team."

The clinching game of the series began with a ceremony to honor 11 Blue Devil seniors—including three redshirt juniors—but it was the underclassmen who led the charge for the win that followed shortly thereafter, starting in the second inning with a solo home run from redshirt sophomore Jalen Phillips to take a 1-0 lead.

Redshirt sophomore Jalen Phillips cranked a solo homer to give Duke an early lead Saturday.

"We kept talking about sending the seniors off with a win, and we were all going up there and trying to do our best," Phillips said.

Duke (31-22, 10-19 in the ACC) extended its lead to 3-0 two innings later, beginning with Phillips' second trip across home plate on a double from junior Kenny Koplove. With Koplove at second, freshman Justin Bellinger stepped to the plate and slugged the first pitch to the center field warning track, boosting the lead to 3-0.

Five runs across the next four innings would allow the Blue Devils to pull away and clinch the series.

"We were opportunistic," head coach Chris Pollard said. "We did a good job of taking advantage of some free bases, and we were also very effective with the running game and the bunt game, and that was a difference too, and those were points of interest for us going into the weekend."

The Demon Deacons (27-26, 12-18) entered the series second in the ACC in both batting average and slugging percentage but were held to four runs across the three-game series in Durham. The Blue Devils managed 11 unanswered runs across Friday and Saturday before Wake Forest broke through in the seventh inning of the final game after Stuart Fairchild drew a bases-loaded walk to make the score 4-1.

Freshman pitcher Mitch Stallings quashed any hopes of a late comeback when he relieved senior Sarkis Ohanian with the bases loaded and the go-ahead run at the plate. With a full count, the southpaw struck out Wake Forest's Justin Yurchak swinging to end the inning and send Duke into the bottom of the inning, when it would add three runs to the 4-1 lead.

A large reason for the Demon Deacons' season-long success at the plate had been Will Craig, who leads the ACC with a .392 batting average and .720 slugging percentage. But the sophomore was silenced by the slew of Blue Devil arms he faced during the weekend. In the 3-1 loss Thursday, the Wake Forest slugger was pitched carefully by the Duke staff, drawing three walks, but in the latter two contests Craig went a combined 0-for-5, striking out three times and walking once.

"We just made good pitches when we had to against him," Pollard said. "He's a terrific player—no doubt one of the best players in our league—but we did a good job of executing our plan. On Thursday night we tried to be too fine, we were trying to make perfect pitches instead of just making the good pitch...but over the last two ball games we just went at him at the bottom of the zone."

Duke's pitching staff was effective against the entire Wake Forest lineup, getting strong outings from its oldest and newest members. Seniors Andrew Istler and Dillon Haviland started Thursday and Friday's contests, and sophomore Bailey Clark took to the mound Saturday, pitching 4 1/3 innings to earn the win.

Five different pitchers took the mound in the season finale, none of them throwing for more than two innings after Clark retired. Joining Clark, Stallings and Ohanian were freshman Jack Labosky and junior Kenny Koplove, who closed out the game after starting at shortstop.

"It's a weird dichotomy this year of having some senior guys that are leading us and then having some really really young guys," Pollard said. "It's who we are, but it's been fun, and it's a good group of guys. They work very hard, I'm really proud of our senior leadership and [it was] great to see those guys walk off the field with a win today."

Although the Blue Devils will not continue into the postseason—only the top 10 ACC teams qualify for the conference tournament—the final series put this year's squad into the record books for reasons besides their come-from-behind win. Friday's victory was Duke's 30th of the year, making it the second consecutive 30-win season—the first since 2009 and the eighth in program history.

"I can only speak to the last three years—I've only been here for three years—but it's incredible what this group of [seniors] has done," Pollard said. "To be where we were three years ago to where we are now, it's a credit to this group who stuck with it through some tough times. They now have experienced two good back-to-back years, and they will absolutely be the foundation for this program moving forward."

Senior Andy Perez notched his 33rd and 34th stolen bases of the season Friday—surpassing the Blue Devil record set in 1992 by former big-leaguer Quinton McCracken—before adding his 35th Saturday.

Perez and Rosenfeld—team captains and the two seniors in the starting lineup—have been a part of a drastic change during their time in Durham. The squad notched 10 more wins in 2015 than in 2011, where they finished 9-22 in conference play.

"[The program is] on the up-and-up, for sure. Last year we finished fourth in the ACC, [and] I think we'll be a top team going forward," Rosenfeld said. "The younger guys [today] were saying, 'Do it for the seniors,' and it's a sad reality—it's time to hang up the jersey—but it's been an unreal time here...definitely a great time, and I'm certainly happy it ended this way."

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