The baseball team has the look of a battered heavyweight fighter about to head out for round 12. But its ACC season is only about to begin.
Duke dropped to 10-9 Wednesday after a mistake-laden 9-0 loss to Ball State. Now the Blue Devils face the difficult task of opening their ACC schedule with two three-game road series, at Wake Forest this weekend and at Virginia next weekend.
Coach Steve Traylor said the team wants to put the Ball State game behind and focus on the task at hand.
"There was no excuse for the mental mistakes Wednesday," he said. "That is not usually like us.... We just want to put that behind us going into Wake Forest because we are facing one of the best teams in the country."
The Demon Deacons (10-4) are the defending ACC champions and were ranked in the top 20 at the start of the season. They are currently ranked 22nd.
In addition to returning eight of nine starters, Wake Forest boasts perhaps the finest starting rotation in the country. Traylor believes the pitching matchups in the first two games will be crucial.
"It's two of the better pitching matchups in the conference with Chris Capuano against Mike McDougal and Stephen Cowie going against John Hendricks," he said. "MacDougal and Hendricks were two guys that were first-team all-ACC last year. Wake Forest probably has the best pitching staff in the country.
"MacDougal is going to be a high draft pick.... He's a top prospect."
Past Capuano and Cowie, the Blue Devils' pitching staff has had difficulties of late. In the absence of Brent Reid, Traylor finds himself in search of a third starter. After his strong performance in the Ball State game, Tyler Lang, according to Traylor, will almost certainly get the ball for the third game against Wake Forest.
After Wake Forest, Duke faces the Cavaliers in Charlottesville. Virginia has accumulated a 7-9 record thus far, but it won two of three against the same Penn State team that beat the Blue Devils 13-1 and 3-1. Traylor said that Duke will not take the Cavaliers lightly.
"Virginia is very good," he said. "We've probably only won one or two games there in the last four years. Charlottesville is a very tough place to play.
"We know we're going to struggle to score runs. We're not a high-scoring team. We are just going to have to execute."
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