There is only one word that can describe the 1994 baseball team -- determined.
Despite losing half of their pitching staff before the season began, the Blue Devils relied on a potent offense to finish tied for second in the Atlantic Coast Conference with an overall record of 33-20, 16-8 in the ACC.
The 33 wins marked the third straight season that the Blue Devils have finished with 30 or more wins, a feat never before accomplished in school history. It was also Duke's highest finish ever in the ACC.
"I think it's probably the most over-achieving team I've been around, and it may be one of the most over-achieving teams ever in the ACC," head coach Steve Traylor said. "That's a team that was picked sixth, just barely out of seventh, lost half of it's pitching staff and finished second in the ACC."
Traylor believed at the beginning of the season that his 1994 squad would be a team headed to the top of the conference. But with a pre-season wrist injury to freshman Richard Dishman, Scott Schoeneweis' off-season battle with testicular cancer, and the loss of junior Craig Starman to an elbow injury just five games into the season, the Blue Devils seemed destined for mediocrity.
"Coming into this season, I felt like this was the best team I had ever had," Traylor said. "Halfway through the year, it looked like the kind of situation where you were hoping for a .500 season."
But the Blue Devils never gave up, and instead became the surprise of the ACC. Duke closed out the regular season by winning 11 of its last 12 conference games.
Much of the success should be credited to the trio of Ryan Jackson, Sean McNally and Scott Pinoni, who were the centerpiece of the powerful Blue Devil offense. All three players broke the previous team single-season record of 13 home runs. Jackson ended the season leading the team with 22 dingers, while Pinoni and McNally finished the season with 19 and 15 homers, respectively.
"It will be hard for us to ever put an offensive team on the field like we did this year," Traylor said. "It was just an awesome offensive team."
Jackson, McNally, and Pinoni helped the 1994 Blue Devils re-write the Duke record book. Duke finished the season with 88 home runs, 583 hits, 113 doubles, and 413 RBI-- all new school records.
"It's going to take a while for a team to match the stats we put up this year," Pinoni said.
Often overshadowed by the mighty offense was a pitching staff that came together at the end of the season. Jackson finished his collegiate career with four straight complete games, three of which were victories. Senior Josh Shipman and Schoeneweis also gave the Blue Devils solid pitching when it was needed most.
"Our pitching staff had shown that they are few in numbers but big in heart," Traylor said.
Yet the defining characteristic of the 1994 Blue Devils was their uncanny ability to come from behind and win games. Four times in its last six games, Duke scrapped together runs to overcome a deficit. Three of those times, all it took was one swing of Pinoni's bat to give the Blue Devils the win.
"We didn't back down from one team all year," McNally said. "Everybody on the team believed that we were as good or better than anyone in the league."
The Blue Devils' season unexpectedly ended when the team did not receive a bid to the NCAA Regionals, the first time in ACC history that the second place team did not receive a bid. But despite the disappointment, the 1994 team will always be remembered for its record-breaking regular season.
"I'll always have a warm spot for this team," Traylor said. "[This season] was unbelievable."
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