What could have been a dominant weekend trip for No. 6 Duke turned into a long bus ride home in a matter of unfortunate late-game moments.
After winning both games of a Saturday double-header and building a five-run lead Sunday, the Blue Devils took their foot off the gas and were unable to complete the sweep against Pittsburgh. Senior catcher Alex Stone and junior center fielder Devin Obee had strong weekends, but 10 earned runs from the bullpen led to a sour 11-10 loss in the series finale.
"It was a back-and-forth ballgame all day long,” head coach Chris Pollard said. “There were a bunch of lead chances, and they jumped up early and extended. We did a great job of having an answer and then they did a great job of answering us. It was one of those days that you knew it was going to take a lot of runs to win the game.”
Just when it seemed like Duke (26-10, 11-7 in the ACC) was ready to cruise to its second-straight ACC series sweep, the Panthers pounced on the Blue Devils' pitching staff. First, a three-run homerun from senior second baseman Tyler Bischke in the seventh brought the game within two. An inning later, Pittsburgh (14-18, 4-14) strung together five hits to reclaim the lead for good.
Bischke’s bomb came off sophomore pitcher James Tallon, who has struggled to find the same consistency he enjoyed through his rookie campaign as Duke’s closer. The southpaw’s ERA now sits at 8.36 — a far cry from his 1.64 mark last season.
The loss does not rest solely on Tallon’s shoulders, however, as he gave up just three of the 11 runs surrendered by the Blue Devils. Unlike its dominance Saturday — the Panthers mustered just eight hits in two games — Duke’s arm barn was uncharacteristically porous. A major reason for this was the Blue Devils’ inability to get ahead in the count. Pittsburgh’s batters saw a first-pitch strike in less than half of their at-bats that lasted more than one pitch.
This tightened the margin of error for Duke’s pitchers and allowed the Panthers to sit back and wait for their preferred offering. Consequently, a pitch like Tallon’s fastball — which he would usually blow past batters caught on their heels — lost its punch.
Struggling to find the zone also leads to longer at bats and more time in between innings, which can take the air out of an offense firing on all cylinders. That is exactly what happened Sunday, as the Blue Devils’ high-flying bats simply ran out of time to turn the tides.
Obee reached base with an infield single in the top of the ninth and advanced to second on a throwing error, but three consecutive unproductive at bats quelled any hope of a Duke comeback and sealed the team’s fate. It was Obee’s third hit of the afternoon, as the veteran outfielder had already sent two over the center-field fence.
His first long ball, a 467-foot no-doubter, tied the game at four and brought the Blue Devils to life in the fourth. Stone, who finished the weekend with seven hits and seven RBIs, followed him up in the fifth with a two-RBI double. In total, the lineup tallied 13 hits — eight of which were for extra bases.
This came without star third baseman Ben Miller, who injured his hand in the team’s midweek game against William and Mary. Graduate student Harrison Rodgers, Miller’s replacement at the hot corner, finished the series with just three hits and picked up an error Sunday.
The success of the lineup made the loss all the more painful for Duke, who had previously not allowed a run after the fourth inning to Pittsburgh. In fact, it was the Blue Devils who had come up with some late-game magic Saturday. Trailing 3-2 with two innings to play, graduate second baseman Zac Morris and Obee came up with the key RBIs to pull off the comeback.
For the majority of the weekend, Duke continued to perform at the level of a top-10 squad. Sunday showed, though, that it takes wire-to-wire focus to finish a win. The Blue Devils will need that level of energy as they approach the end of the regular season and head into a potential deep postseason run.
Next on the calendar is a midweek matchup against Gardner-Webb and a trip to Blacksburg, Va., for a weekend series against No. 20 Virginia Tech.
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Dom Fenoglio is a Trinity sophomore and a sports managing editor of The Chronicle's 120th volume.