After splitting the first two games of its weekend series with Virginia, Duke's defense failed solid pitching in the final game, as the Blue Devils fell, 11-3, to the 18th-ranked Cavaliers.
Duke (11-26, 4-11 in the ACC) tied a season-high by committing six errors, which led to five unearned runs for Virginia (27-9. 8-7) Sunday at Jack Coombs Field.
"It's pretty self-explanatory-pretty routine plays and we didn't make them," manager Sean McNally said. "In this league and to play at this level, you have to catch the ball better and our guys know that. It certainly was a key factor in the game."
The Blue Devils had won Friday's opener, 4-3, but were defeated, 7-3, Saturday.
The rubber game began to slip away from Duke in the sixth inning, when Virginia broke a 3-3 tie with two runs. Cavalier catcher Ryan Hudson started the rally with a one-out double down the left field line and scored the go-ahead run on a two-out single by Greg Miclat. Miclat moved to second when the Blue Devils failed to cut off the throw to the plate, a miscue that proved costly when the next batter, Tim Henry, singled in Miclat for a 5-3 advantage.
Virginia put the game out of reach in the eighth when the Cavaliers batted around while crossing the plate six times. Errors by left fielder Adam Murray and third baseman Kyle Kreick-who had three errors in the game-allowed the Cavaliers to push the lead to 8-3. Virginia took advantage of the extra outs when David Adams hit a two-out, three-run blast to left field for an 11-3 lead. Four of the Cavaliers' six runs in the inning were unearned.
Duke had jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the first off Virginia starter Mike Ballard (5-2). Nate Freiman drove in Jimmy Gallagher with an RBI single and later scored on a groundout by Javier Socorro.
Virginia responded with a run in each of the next three innings to take the lead. After Miclat's two-out RBI single got the Cavaliers on the board in the second, Virginia tied the game in the third with an unearned run. Brandon Marsh's grounder bounced through the legs of first baseman Jonathan Nicolla to start the inning. Two batters later, Brett Bartles threw away David Adams' grounder to allow Marsh to score the tying run.
In the fourth, Kreick's throwing error on Miclat's bunt loaded the bases with no one out. After a sacrifice fly from Henry, Bartles redeemed himself by smoothly turning a 6-6-3 double play to end the inning and limit the damage.
The Blue Devils tied it in the bottom of the inning on a run-scoring single by Nicolla. That was all Duke would manage the rest of the way, however, as Ballard shut the Blue Devil offense down. The senior southpaw pitched eight innings, allowing only three runs on six hits.
"[Ballard] is an experienced guy on the mound who's had success in the ACC," McNally said. "I thought we came out, did a good job in the first inning jumping on him to try to seize momentum a little bit, but he did a good job from there out."
Duke won one game against the nationally-ranked Cavaliers, though. For the second Friday in a row, the Blue Devils won in their final at-bat. After last week's 16-inning win at Boston College, senior Adam Murray won the series-opener with a one-out single in the bottom of the ninth for a 4-3 walkoff win.
Murray's heroics gave junior ace Danny Otero his fifth win of the season. Otero (5-2) went the distance for the second time this season, allowing the three runs on nine hits with four strikeouts.
"You want to start every ACC series with a win and we did that," McNally said. "This club knows we can play better and that's why we're kind of disappointed coming out of this weekend. We knew they were going to play well, which they did, we just didn't match them the last two games."
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