The dream season continued for the Duke baseball team last weekend.
The 19th-ranked Blue Devils increased their winning streak to seven games at Jack Coombs Field by sweeping a three-game series against Wake Forest for the first time since 1952.
And by winning 11 out of their last 12 Atlantic Coast Conference games, the Blue Devils (33-18 overall, 16-8 in the ACC) virtually guaranteed themselves a spot in the NCAA tournament, a feat only accomplished once before in school history in 1961.
Duke maintained its red-hot play by coming from behind in two of the three games, a pattern it has become accustomed to in the past month.
"[Our guys] don't fear anybody," head coach Steve Traylor said. "They've got confidence in themselves. When you've got guys in your lineup that can hit the ball out of the park, you always have a feeling in the dugout that you are in the game."
In the first game of the series, Wake started its ace, All-American pitching candidate Bret Wagner.
"He will be one of the top 15 picks in America when the [major league baseball] draft comes," Traylor said.
Duke managed to score three runs off Wagner through six innings, two on Sean McNally's 400-foot home run to deep center field. The Blue Devils trailed 5-3 going into the bottom of the seventh inning.
That's when Duke's "comeback kids" took over.
With a man on first, Ryan Jackson drew a two-out walk, meaning Duke's next batter, Scott Pinoni, represented the go-ahead run.
Wagner challenged the powerful first baseman with a fastball, and the Duke slugger whacked the pitch out of the ballpark to give the Blue Devils a 6-5 lead.
"He threw me [a fastball] the first pitch, and it was a ball," Pinoni said. "So I was just sitting on a fastball for the next pitch. He put it right there, and I just hit it well."
Jackson closed the game by pitching two scoreless innings, and the Blue Devils gained what Traylor said was an NCAA-bid clinching 6-5 victory.
"When it's been 40 years since you've been to a regional, and you get as close as we're sitting coming into this game -- that makes [this game] one of the biggest wins in our schools history," Traylor said.
Saturday's second game saw Jackson throw a complete game as Duke, bolstered by 10 runs in the first four innings, cruised to an easy 12-3 win.
"I think that might have been the best game we've had all year," Traylor said after Saturday's win. "We got outstanding pitching. We got good hitting up and down the lineup. We played great defense, ran the bases well, executed well."
In Sunday's series finale, Duke suffered an early scare as starter Scott Schoeneweis left the game after two-thirds of an inning with tenderness in his left elbow.
Traylor said afterwards that he wanted to save a well-rested Schoeneweis for the ACC tournament.
Will Barr replaced Schoeneweis, and Wake built a 7-2 lead by the fifth inning.
David Darwin entered the game for Duke in the sixth, and he allowed two inherited runners to score. Then he shut down the Wake offense the rest of the game.
Down 9-4 in the bottom of the sixth, the potent Blue Devil bats came alive. Jackson hit a three-run home run to left center, immediately followed by a Pinoni shot to right center. The Blue Devils added two more runs to take a 10-9 lead.
Pinoni's three-run homer in the seventh highlighted Duke's four-run inning. Duke added two more runs in the eight to cap the 15-9 win.
"[The team] is a little bit like a run-a-way train, and it just kind of mows over everything in it's path," Traylor said. "But that can leave as quickly as it comes.."
NOTE: Jackson was named ACC Pitcher of the Week for the week of May 9-15. The honor comes one week after Jackson earned ACC Player of the Week honors for his performance in wins over Florida State and North Carolina.
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