That’s not how you draw up the start of a season.

Duke’s baseball team dropped the first game of its season, 8-3 against visiting Cincinnati on Friday at Jack Coombs Field.

“I just tip my hat to Cincinnati. They outplayed us in all three phases,” Duke coach Chris Pollard said via news release. “They came in tonight better prepared than we were. They executed on the mound, played sound defense, and did a great job of taking advantage of some free offense.”

That free offense refers to three hit batters and two walks, plus two errors in the field by the Blue Devils. Both errors were committed on throws by pitcher Kyle Johnson (0-1), giving Cincinnati a run in the second inning and its second of a three-run third.

The other two runs in the third inning came on a bases-loaded walk and a sacrifice fly. Two of Cincinnati’s three hits in that inning were bunts.

Johnson, a sophomore lefty, was charged with five runs allowed (three earned) on five hits, two walks a one hit batter. Transfer Ryan Easterly (Yale) pitched the next four innings, striking out five and only allowing one hit — but giving up three in the eighth inning, on two hit batters, a sacrifice fly and a two-run homer by Landyn Vidourek.

The Blue Devils’ runs all came via solo homers — Ben Miller in the first inning for the game’s first run, Andrew Yu in the second for a 2-1 lead, and Tyler Albright in the seventh to cut the Bearcats’ lead to 5-3.

Duke gave up three runs in the top of the eighth. The Blue Devils hit into double plays in the eighth and ninth innings, snuffing out any chance of a comeback from the five-run deficit.

Ben Rounds and Albright had two hits apiece for Duke. The Blue Devils outhit Cincinnati 8-6 but those two double plays, plus seven runners left on base, made runs difficult to come by.