Blue Devils ready play road warrior role again

DURHAM – Hindsight being perfect and all, Duke’s backslide in May led the Blue Devils to winning last weekend’s regional at Coastal Carolina.

You read that right.

Chris Pollard’s team has been a loose bunch for most of the season and the exception was the Blue Devils’ worst stretch. That was a 3-8 stretch, including four straight losses, before Duke went to Coastal Carolina and beat all three teams in the Conway regional once to reach a super regional series at Virginia, which starts Friday.

The Blue Devils dropped out of position to host a regional, Pollard explained, because they were thinking about doing something no Duke baseball team has done before.

“Maybe we let the pressure of trying to host a regional impact our play in the month of May,” Pollard said. “I think we all, me included, got wrapped up in, ‘Hey, if we play well here in the next two weeks, we’re going to host a regional in Durham and that’s something that’s never been done before.’

“I don’t think we played bad baseball. But I don’t think we were the loosest version of ourselves.”

That’s the team the Blue Devils got back to being in Conway.

It’s best evidenced by Duke’s 12-3 thrashing of Coastal Carolina in Monday night’s decisive game. One night after losing in its first chance to clinch the regional, the Blue Devils lived by their #bluecollar mantra and steamrolled into the program’s third super regional appearance since 2018.

“Once we got through the ACC tournament and it was a realization that, ‘Hey, we’re going to have to go on the road now,’ that pressure was off,” Pollard said. “We just kind of loosened back up and got back to who we were.

“Some of our struggles in May are, candidly, on me.”

Duke didn’t struggle at Coastal Carolina.

“We love being on the road. We have this thing, we’re road dogs,” catcher Alex Stone said. “I think we play better on the road, we have high energy and we love the crowds.”

At first glance, the numbers don’t exactly bear that out.

Duke was 24-12 splitting home games between Durham Bulls Athletic Park and Jack Coombs Field. Winning two of every three games is better than the 10-7 ledger the Blue Devils have on the road.

Except when you consider some of the teams Duke notched those 10 wins against, Stone’s point gains validity.

The Blue Devils won two of three at Virginia, Clemson and Boston College this season; the first two hosted regionals and Boston College was the 2-seed in the lowest-seeded No. 1’s regional (Alabama). Duke was never swept, winning one game at each Miami and UNC, and notched a road win at Campbell — each of those teams was in the NCAA tournament.

If you’re measuring quality of wins, Duke’s 10-7 road record becomes all the more impressive.

Figuring out how to handle the pressure of hosting becomes a next-year problem; now the Blue Devils get one more chance to be road dogs.

All that’s on the line is the program’s first trip to the College World Series since 1961.

No pressure.