From Big Red to Blue Devils: Cornell grad transfers Urbon, McAfee thriving for Duke baseball

For most Ivy Leaguers, the end of four years of undergraduate study marks a time of significant change. Seniors enjoy their final days on campus knowing that their late-night study sessions in the library are numbered, soon to be replaced by long hours in an office, lab or wherever their post-graduation plans take them.

Brian McAfee and Kellen Urbon just wanted to do what they had been doing for the past four years—pitch.

But Ivy League regulations—which prohibit players from competing for a fifth year after receiving undergraduate degrees—threw a wrinkle in those plans. Both McAfee and Urbon were on track to graduate from Cornell, and each had an extra year of eligibility at a non-Ivy League school. Each pitcher suffered a season-ending injury—Urbon in 2013 and McAfee in 2014—but the Ivy League does not award redshirts, meaning they could continue their pitching careers elsewhere.

Urbon and McAfee had to go back through the recruiting process as graduate transfers—a process that eventually brought them to Duke.

“You kind of have to send notices—you have to get waivers to talk to other coaches. I think I sent them to five or six different schools, just kind of sending feelers out there since it was really late in the process and I had no idea what was going to be available,” Urbon said. “After I sent a few of those out, a few days later I got a call from [Duke head coach Chris] Pollard, so that was pretty exciting. I had no idea that would work—it was just a shot in the dark.”

Graduate transfers are not terribly common in baseball, since a player already well into his 20s has little appeal in the draft to major league clubs. Duke, however, had already collected one graduate transfer from an Ivy League school in 2014, when Ryan Deitrich came to Durham for a fifth season after four years at Pennsylvania.

Deitrich, like McAfee, produced a first-team All-Ivy League season in his last year in the conference, and the outfielder was expected to be a consistent slugger in the middle of the Blue Devil lineup. He did not disappoint, ranking third in the ACC in both home runs and slugging percentage, paving the way for future transfers like McAfee and Urbon to thrive.

“One thing that helps now is that we’ve had guys come here and have a good experience. Ryan Deitrich came here and had a great year—was an everyday guy and wound up hitting .300 with nine home runs, I think, and now these two guys have had good years as well,” Pollard said. “It opens a door—we’ve got another pitcher from the Ivy League coming in next year who has a chance to help us in a similar fashion. It’s definitely part of our recruiting model and our recruiting philosophy.”

For athletes with Ivy League diplomas, going to an academically selective university like Duke makes for a smooth transition off the diamond. The Fuqua School of Business—where both McAfee and Urbon are pursuing their master’s degrees—is a nationally-renowned program that Pollard said “sells itself” and is a tremendous help with his recruiting pitch.

The recruiting process for graduate transfers is not as streamlined as the regular recruiting path for high-schoolers, due to a smaller number of players involved. McAfee said he only heard from his head coach at Cornell that playing another season without sitting out was even a possibility, and were it not for a few mutual connections, neither him nor Urbon would have ended up at Duke.

Pollard said the entire network is predicated on having relationships with other college coaches who can recommend players to each other and give first-hand scouting reports beyond the numbers and statistics. From there, he is free to reach out to the athletes individually and begin to forge a relationship—a liberty not available in the high school setting, where high school coaches are the only permitted method of direct contact.

Most high school recruiting occurs before a student’s junior year, by which time they have likely already committed to one school. College coaches have to be versatile in dealing with an age range from college seniors to high school underclassmen, but for Pollard, there is a clear advantage to going after older players.

“I’ve said this to my wife a couple times—if I had my way, I’d only recruit fifth-year guys, because you’re talking to grown men,” he said. “You’re talking to 21-year-old grown men who have spent four years in college and matured, versus a 15-year-old high school sophomore. It’s a big difference.”

With a smaller number of teams in the market for graduate transfers—Urbon said Notre Dame was the only other school seriously pursuing him and McAfee did not mention any—Pollard can be more specific and tailor his message to the program he has created at Duke.

Since he took the helm in 2012, Pollard has preached the importance of attacking hitters and filling up the strike zone, and control pitchers like Drew Van Orden and Andrew Istler have thrived under this philosophy. It is no accident that both McAfee and Urbon possess the same ability to locate the ball on both sides of the plate.

The duo has surrendered just 23 free passes in 128 innings—good for 1.6 walks per nine innings. McAfee walks an ACC-low 1.3 batters per game and ranks second in innings pitched, and Urbon sits tied for seventh in walks allowed and seventh in ERA at 2.29.

“I didn’t get too many looks coming out of high school, but from what Coach Pollard said, he talked to a lot of other coaches in the Ivy League and the way I pitch fits in with the way we pitch here at Duke,” McAfee said. “Pitch to contact, soft contact early in the count. I liked all the philosophies that [former pitching coach Andrew See] had to talk about.”

McAfee made his decision to attend Duke first, and Urbon followed suit not long after. The pair of West Coast right-handers—McAfee hails from Bothell, Wash., and Urbon from sunny San Diego—roomed together as sophomores at Cornell, and are doing so again this year.

Despite those similarities, the roles each plays on the mound are quite different. McAfee was strictly a starter from the outset, leading the Big Red with 66 2/3 innings his freshman year and immediately sliding in as the Sunday starter for Duke this season. Urbon began his Cornell career as a closer—he racked up nine saves as a freshman and is the program’s all-time leader with 13—before shifting exclusively into the rotation as a senior.

Together, McAfee and Urbon have been two of the most dependable options on Pollard’s staff, ranking in the top two in innings pitched with a combined record of 11-4 and an ERA of 3.09. Both of them lauded the depth of ACC lineups compared to their Ivy League counterparts and pointed to several adjustments they have had to make on the mound, but the numbers indicate they have made the transition look easy.

“We knew those guys were good. You always wonder how what they’ve done in one [league] is going to transcend to what they do in the ACC, but it really goes to show you if you throw strikes—which both of those guys do at a really high efficiency rate—and you trust your stuff, you can do really good things,” Pollard said.