Having accounted for four outs in his first three trips to the plate in the second game of Saturday's double-header, Duke rightfielder Jordan Litrownik wasn't in much of a jovial mood when he stepped into the batter's box against Clemson's Donovan Harrison with his team down 6-5 in the seventh inning.
Apparently, Litrownik took out his frustrations on the baseball, depositing the first offering from Harrison just beyond the left field fence. Litrownik's two-run blast capped a Duke rally from an early 4-0 deficit and gave Duke a 7-6 win over the fifth-ranked Clemson Tigers (34-6, 8-4 in the Atlantic Coast Conference).
"That was the first good pitch I got to hit all day," Litrownik said. "I'm a line-drive, single, double type of hitter-I consider it a mistake if I hit a home run. I think he was just trying to get ahead. He threw a fastball right down the middle, I took a good swing at it, and luckily, I hit it good enough to get it out of here."
The Blue Devils (31-11, 5-9) then rode the momentum of the win and the arm of Stephen Cowie to a commanding 6-2 win in Sunday's contest, taking the series, two games to one, at historic Jack Coombs Field.
"[Taking the series] was real important," Duke coach Steve Traylor said. "The reason we're stressing the small things and the fundamentals is so we can win games. It's not just for the enjoyment of the execution. We got two out of three from a legitimate No. 5 team in the country."
However, it certainly did not look like Duke would be able to take any games, let alone two out of three, from Clemson in the early going Saturday. The Tigers rolled to an 8-2 victory in the first game behind a pitching masterpiece from Ryan Mottl, who held the Blue Devils to five hits and two runs, both coming on shortstop Vaughn Schill's solo blasts.
Early in the second game, Clemson looked like it would continue its domination, scoring three runs in the third on a base-clearing double from Kurt Bultmann and adding another in the fourth on a towering bomb off the bat of Matt Padgett which traveled well over 400 feet. Tigers' starting pitcher Mike Paradis struck out the first four Blue Devils he faced and recorded seven of his first nine outs on strike-outs.
"At that point, we were hoping we could at least hit a fair ball this game," Traylor said. "[Paradis] has excellent stuff-there aren't too many pitchers in college baseball who throw harder. We were just hoping to shorten up and put it in play, and eventually we pecked away and got some base-runners."
The Duke bats, however, did not merely peck away at the lead-they erased it in one fell swoop. The Blue Devils sent eight hitters to the plate and pushed four runs across in the fourth inning to even the score at four apiece, highlighted by Adam Geis' two-run triple.
"We just couldn't get a big hit in the [early innings]. If we just could've gotten a hit, we would've distanced ourselves," said Clemson coach Jack Leggett, citing his team's inability to deliver the knock-out punch against Duke starter Ryan Caradonna. "We allowed them to have a big inning-that hurt us. We had a 4-0 lead, then we let them right back in the ball game."
The two teams then traded runs until Litrownik's heroics put the Blue Devils ahead to stay. Brad Dupree and Schill sealed the win by pitching three scoreless innings.
"Basically, if teams beat me, they're going to have to beat me with my best stuff so I just went right after them," Schill said. "I figured the only way to beat them was to get each guy out and not to let anybody on base."
And that was just about what Cowie did to the Tigers Sunday, scattering ten hits in a complete game gem. The Tigers, entering the game hitting well over .350 as a team, belted only one extra-base hit and did not advance a runner past second base until the seventh inning.
"He came out and threw strikes all day long," said Padgett, who went 7-for-13 at the plate in the series, including two homers, but only managed two harmless singles Sunday. "He threw three pitches-fastball, slider, change-up-for strikes. So he kept us off-balance the whole day. I couldn't really get around on the ball like I wanted to. He made some pitches, that's how it goes sometimes."
The Blue Devils strung together four straight singles good for two runs to start the game, then almost gave a repeat performance in the fifth inning, converting a walk, four singles, and then a double into three runs. Another run in the sixth inning on a wild pitch gave Duke a 6-0 lead heading into the final frames.
Cowie encountered his first serious jam in the seventh inning. After surrendering a two-run double to Patrick Boyd, Cowie faced the red-hot Padgett with a runner on second and two outs. Padgett, however, couldn't solve Cowie and grounded the ball weakly to first baseman John Benik.
"[Catcher Gregg] Maluchnik was just asking me what I wanted to do with him, and I said whatever he thought was best," Cowie said. "I wound up getting ahead of him, and I got a good slider in on him and he pulled a ground ball down the line. We've been going away on him, so I got a slider in on his hands."
Clemson did not mount a serious threat after the seventh as Cowie ended his day with a flourish, striking out Casey Stone to finish up his third complete game.
"We came in here wanting to sweep this weekend-it just didn't happen," Padgett said. "The guys out-played us a couple of times and we lost two out of three."
Notes: The two teams were forced to play a double-header Saturday because Friday's game was rained-out...Cowie's second conference win improved his record to 9-1...The 1385 fans that turned out for this weekend series marked the highest attendance at Jack Coombs field this season.
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