The baseball team awoke from it's dream season to find itself in the midst of a nightmare at the Atlantic Coast Conference baseball tournament.
The second-seeded Blue Devils unexpectedly exited the tourney in Greenville, S.C. after two games, losing to Wake Forest 9-6 in the first game May 18 and losing to North Carolina 13-12 in last Thursday's elimination round.
Duke, which finished the season at 33-20 overall, came in second in the ACC regular season standings, but its quick exit from the ACC tourney may have prevented the team from receiving a bid to the NCAA tournament.
"I really don't have an explanation for [the losses]," said ACC player of the year Ryan Jackson. "We just didn't get the breaks that we had gotten earlier in some other games. Everybody needs breaks in the ACC games because it's such equal competition."
Head coach Steve Traylor realized that it would be hard for Duke to continue it's winning streak.
"You can only win so many games in a row," head coach Steve Traylor said. "We were playing well going in and we played down there very similar to the way we've been playing for the last month.
"We've got nobody to blame but ourselves, but we played hard. We swung the bats well, and I'm proud of us."
Ironically, Duke ended the regular season with sweeps over Tar Heels and the Demon Deacons.
"We were playing two very quality teams," Traylor said. "Just because we swept them didn't mean that those were going to be easy games. In some ways, that makes the task [of winning] even more difficult. From a psychological standpoint, we were probably at a disadvantage in both of those games."
In the first game, the Blue Devils had Ryan Jackson take the mound to oppose Wake All-American candidate Bret Wagner.
The hot-hitting Duke bats continued their attack against Wagner, scoring five runs going into the ninth. The Demon Deacon offense matched that output against Jackson, and the teams entered the final inning in a 5-5 tie.
Jackson gave up four runs in the ninth, and the Blue Devils could only manage one run in the bottom of the inning as they fell 9-6.
In the second game, Duke was hurt by its pitching, the Blue Devils' biggest weakness all year.
"We didn't get very good pitching at all in that second game," Traylor said.
Still, Duke's offense gave the Blue Devils a 12-10 cushion heading into the ninth inning. One out away from winning, catcher Randy Goodroe committed a throwing error to first base that led to the winning run scoring.
"Carolina -- that was just a heart-breaking game, just because we had the game under control the whole way through, "Jackson said. "We were up by four runs going into the eighth inning. We had [Scott] Schoeneweis pitching, our ace closer. I just didn't feel that we could lose. Somehow, we managed to."
Traylor said that the ACC losses did not diminish Duke's overall season.
"Our guys couldn't have given us any more this year than what they did," Traylor said. "It was unbelievable."
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