The Duke baseball team won its first game of pool play in the ACC Championship on Tuesday night, an 11-8 victory over Virginia Tech powered by the bat of second baseman Zac Morris.
The Blue Devils trailed early after starting pitcher Ryan Higgins completely unraveled in the second inning. After four straight outs to start the game, including three strikeouts in a row after he fanned the leadoff batter in the second.
Higgins, then, walked the next batter. And the one after that. And the one after him, too. Then he walked a fourth straight Virginia Tech batter, bringing a run around without a single hit.
James Tallon came in to pitch from there, but bases loaded with one out is not an enviable starting spot. A sacrifice fly on his first batter made it a 2-0 game before Hokies third baseman Carson DeMartini mashed a ball over the wall for a three-run homer.
The Blue Devils roared back in the third with six runs of their own. A leadoff triple from Devin Obee and a Wallace Clark walk put runners on the corners for Morris, who lofted his first home run of the evening to cut the lead to 5-3.
The run continued with RBI singles from Logan Bravo and Chase Krewson, the latter bringing home a pair with his two-out poke into the outfield.
The lead stayed at one run for a while, but a solo shot from catcher Alex Stone in the fifth doubled it. Morris put the game out of reach for good when he blasted his second home run of the day, a two-run shot giving him five RBIs and giving Duke a 9-5 lead.
ZAC MORRIS TWO-HOMER GAME
🤟 @Zmorris111
B6 | Duke 9, VT 5 | #BlueCollar pic.twitter.com/hvhlH5S5II
— Duke Baseball (@DukeBASE) May 22, 2024
Virginia Tech tried to claw back with a run of their own in the seventh, but the Blue Devils threw on two more in the bottom of the frame to make matters worse.
First Team All-ACC closer Charlie Beilenson came in for the final nine outs, and although he coughed up a two-run homer in the eighth, it proved to mean nothing for the outcome. He struck out two batters in the ninth, a three-up, three-down inning to put a stamp on his 12th save of the season.
Duke now waits for NC State, the top seed in their pool, on Thursday. The game will effectively control Duke’s chances to reach the semifinals, as the Wolfpack hold the tiebreaker over the Blue Devils as the higher seed. Duke either needs to win both games or needs NC State to lose both games.
The second game of pool play will start at 7 p.m. on Thursday.