Duke came out of a weeklong break for exams and cruised to a couple of seven-inning blowout wins against Radford on Sunday.
The Blue Devils (32-15) had not played since last Sunday; Duke started final exams for the spring semester on Monday and the last of them was Saturday.
“I thought today was more of a product of us playing really well, than Radford not,” Duke coach Chris Pollard said via news release. “I thought we were really good in all three phases today. I have been here long enough to know the post-exam break games are tough. I thought we were really locked in from the beginning.”
Here are quick recaps for each of Sunday’s games:
Duke 15, Radford 0 (7 innings)
In the first game, Duke broke through with a five-run third inning and backed it up with a five-run fourth.
Ben Rounds was 3-for-5 with six RBI, with the a three-run double in the third and then RBI singles in each of the next two innings.
Sam Harris (2-for-3) and AJ Gracia (2-for-4) had the other multi-hit games for the Blue Devils. Harris drove in four runs, three of them on a home run in the fourth.
Duke’s offense piled up 13 hits and 10 walks.
The abbreviated one-hitter was a three-man effort on the mound, with Andrew Healy (3-3) taking the bulk of those innings.
Healy pitched five innings, allowing one hit and one walk. He only needed 67 pitches to get through five innings and had five strikeouts.
Kyle Johnson and Ryan Calvert recorded a 1-2-3 inning each to end the game and preserve the shutout.
Duke 17, Radford 5 (7 innings)
In the second game, Radford took an early lead on James Ward’s two-run homer in the first inning.
That was erased with Duke putting up four-run innings in the second and third, and the Blue Devils kept pouring it on with one run in the fourth, three in the fifth and five in the sixth.
Duke got its first four runs on one hit, with Wallace Clark hitting a grand slam. Harris drove in a run with a single in the third, and then Gracia hit a three-run homer to provide a cushion.
Clark added his second homer of the game in the fifth, and later in the inning, Tyler Albright hit a solo homer. Zach Jackson hit a two-run double in the sixth before Jake Hyde’s three-run homer accounted for the Blue Devils’ last runs.
Clark and Gracia were both 2-for-3 as the one-two punch atop Duke’s lineup. They scored three times each and combined for eight RBI. Harris, Albright and Rounds each had two-hit games, too.
Owen Proksch pitched two innings in the start for Duke. Henry Zatkowski pitched the next two and allowed a run; Gabe Nard (6-2) followed him and retired six of the seven batters he faced. Reid Easterly gave up two runs in the seventh but ended the game there.