Duke athletics has been dominated by basketball for as long as anyone can remember.
After all, the Blue Devils men’s basketball team has cut down the nets five teams since 1991. There aren’t many programs with more historical relevance than Duke or figures with more historical relevance than former coach Mike Krzyzewski.
Even this year, Duke is a top-10 team in the country with preseason All-American Kyle Filipowski and five-star freshman Jared McCain, both of whom are living up to the hype.
They still aren’t the best athletes in Durham so far this spring. That would be senior softball pitcher Jala Wright.
Wright has made four starts for the Blue Devils so far this season. She finished the complete game all four times. Across her 27.2 innings pitched, she’s let up 11 hits, three walks, and two earned runs, both of which came on solo home runs.
In that same time frame, she’s struck out 38 batters. Again, compared to just 14 total baserunners. That’s an average of almost 1.4 per inning, meaning that if Wright pitched a complete seven-inning game at her current pace, she’d strike out 9.7 batters before the end of the game.
She tossed out her magnum opus against Michigan State this weekend, retiring 14 of the 18 batters she faced via strikeout. She struck out eight straight batters from the first inning through the end of the third, and then she struck out the last six she faced in a row. 14 out of the Spartans’ last 15 at-bats ended with a third strike.
Wright began her season with a scoreless inning against Oklahoma, the three-time defending national champions and consensus No. 1 team in the country. She pitched a complete game against Nebraska the next day, giving up one run and striking out eight in seven innings.
She went the distance again against Rutgers, again allowing just one run across seven innings before she tossed back-to-back shutouts this weekend. First, she blanked Villanova for five innings in a mercy-rule victory before she suffocated the Spartans offense on Saturday.
Wright’s ERA currently sits at an eye-popping 0.51 through six appearances, and the two solo home runs she’s given up are the only extra-base hits she’s allowed so far this season. Two extra-base hits in 27.2 innings.
The entire Duke softball team deserves your attention as it makes a run toward the Women’s College World Series. The Blue Devils have won 11 straight games with two more on Sunday, and they’re a consensus top-10 team in the country.
If you’re looking to get on a bandwagon early, however, start keeping an eye on when Wright gets to start the game in the circle. There’s a lot of softball left to play, but you might just [anyclip-media thumbnail=”undefined” playlistId=”undefined” content=”dW5kZWZpbmVk”][/anyclip-media]see something unprecedented.