The roller coaster ride continued over the break for the baseball team; the Blue Devils (10-10) defined streaky play--they lost four games in a row to Michigan and North Carolina A&T, won three games in a row against Navy and Princeton, then finished the week with back-to-back losses to the Tigers.
Each of the four losses at the beginning of the week was a heartbreaker for Duke, as three of the four defeats were by one-run margins: The Wolverines took the first two games of the three-game set by scores of 2-1 and 9-8, while the Aggies defeated the Blue Devils 3-2 in a 12 inning contest that was almost tied by Duke in the bottom of the 12th.
Indeed, the game could have been knotted up had Brian Herndandez's two-out drive not struck the opposing pitcher, thereby preventing freshman Jonathan Anderson from scoring from second. The next batter, junior Bryan Smith, fanned, leaving the winning run 90 feet from home plate.
"One-run games are killing us right now," said Duke pitcher Greg Burke, whose two-run, five-hit, complete game performance was squandered by a Blue Devil offense that was only able to earn a single run. "It probably hurts more than it does losing by ten, because you're in the game the whole time, and when you wind up losing, it's pretty upsetting."
Duke's final game against Michigan was equally disappointing. The Blue Devils held a 6-4 lead going into the top of the ninth inning, but freshman Bill Muldowney was unable to retire a single batter in the stanza, and yielded four runs to the Wolverines en route to a 9-6 Duke loss.
"You have to give credit to the University of Michigan," Duke head coach Bill Hillier said after the game. "They played good baseball.
It's tough to go on the road anywhere and sweep. They played well all weekend. We're facing a little adversity right now. We need to regroup."
After losing to North Carolina A&T, the Blue Devils did indeed regroup. Duke won back-to-back games at Navy, by scores of 9-7 and 10-7, and then took the opening game of a home series against Princeton 8-1 thanks to a great pitching performance by junior Tim Layden, who threw seven strong innings, in a three-hit, one-run effort.
Unfortunately, the Tigers responded with a vengeance, and blew out the Blue Devils in the final two games of the series, 13-1 and 10-3. The bullpen deserted Duke in the two losses--they gave up a total of 15 runs, much to the ire of Hillier.
"We've got to pitch better out of the bullpen," Hillier said.
The bullpen is not the only facet of the game confounding the Blue Devils, however.
"We've been very inconsistent," Burke said. "Sometimes we go out and score a lot of runs, other times we go out at and pitch well, we just can't seem to put it together. We're trying hard, and we're doing our best; sometimes though, it's just not working for us."
Duke is rapidly running out of time fix its problems, however.
"We need to regroup and see if we can string together some wins," Hillier said. "We need to get ready to play Old Dominion and then get ready for conference play."
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