The 21st-ranked Duke baseball team got a surprising wake-up call Wednesday afternoon at Jack Coombs Field as non-conference foe Davidson downed the Blue Devils 10-7.
The Wildcats' win stretched the Blue Devils' losing streak to three games and marked only the second time this year that the Blue Devils have fallen to a non-conference opponent.
"For about the first time this year I was not happy with our approach to the game," head coach Steve Traylor said. "Often we had bad at-bats. It's one thing to have an idea of what you are trying to do and then not execute it-that's something you can live with. We didn't really have a good idea or a good plan a lot of times."
An extreme lack of execution at the plate was painfully obvious, as Blue Devil batters stranded 13 runners on base. The lone batter to repeatedly come through in the clutch was freshman third baseman Jeff Becker who finished the game 3-for-5 with four RBIs, including a seventh-inning homer. The two-run blast down the left-field line drifted dangerously close to going foul.
The home plate umpire ruled it a home run, however, much to the dismay of the Wildcats-who argued the call vigorously. Second baseman Jeff Andrews was actually ejected from the game by another umpire for arguing.
The home run moved the score to 10-6 and appeared to be the beginning of a Blue Devil rally. Duke managed only one more run, however-an RBI double by freshman rightfielder Jordan Litrownik-before the Wildcats slammed the door.
The game started well for the Blue Devils as they spotted themselves a 2-0 lead in the bottom of the first on a two RBI single by Becker. In the top of the second, Davidson used a solid combination of walks and singles off Duke starting pitcher Clayton Connor to tie the score at two.
In the top of the fourth, the Wildcats drove the sophomore lefthander from the game by posting five runs, highlighted by a two-run triple by centerfielder Rhett Ingerick. Connor went only three and a third innings, surrendering seven runs on 10 hits.
"He hasn't been real effective lately," Traylor said of Connor. "We were a little thin in our pitching today, playing the mid-week games that we are."
Duke started to claw back in the bottom of the fifth as senior centerfielder Mike King scored on a sacrifice fly by sophomore leftfielder Michael Fletcher to bring the score to 7-3. Davidson retaliated in the next inning with a heavy dose of power as third baseman Gus Quattlebaum and first baseman Brad Edwards combined for back-to-back home runs to right field.
Sophomore reliever Jim Fishburn was victimized by Quattlebaum for a two-run blast. On the very next pitch, the lefthanded Edwards turned on the ball and crushed it so hard that Duke's rightfielder, Litrownik, didn't even bother to move as he watched the ball soar into the Terry Sanford Institute parking lot.
Duke narrowed the deficit to six in the bottom half of the inning on a two-out triple by junior second baseman Frankie Chiou, scoring freshman first baseman John Benik. The Blue Devil pitching finally buckled down in the last three innings as sophomore Stephen Cannon and senior David Darwin combined to hold the Wildcats hitless.
The surprising loss dropped the Blue Devils to 26-6 on the year and placed an unexpected blemish on their record. Having entered the game with a 10-20 record, Davidson could be considered mediocre competition at best.
"We've been hurt in the past by losing non-conference games when it came down to the end of the year," senior pitcher Scott Schoeneweis said. "The conference is going to be tough every weekend, and as important as those games are, these games are just as important. You need to keep winning these non-conference games to keep people off of your back."
"We're not having a good year because we have the best players," Traylor said. "We are having a good year because our guys accept their role, do their own job well, play well as a team and pull together. I didn't feel like we got that today."
The Blue Devils will return to Atlantic Coast Conference play this weekend at Jack Coombs Field versus Virginia on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
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