Duke baseball, now 15-5 so far this season, is still a top-10 team in the eyes of the nation’s coaches,
USA TODAY Sports released its updated NCAA Baseball Coaches Poll on Monday, and the Blue Devils only slid down to ninth despite a home series loss to Clemson over the weekend.
Duke defeated the Tigers on Friday, a 5-2 victory led by a great performance from ace Jonathan Santucci, but Clemson took the Saturday and Sunday games to steal the series in front of the Durham crowd.
The Tigers won the deciding Sunday game in 10 innings, hitting two home runs in the first extra frame after the game was knotted at four runs each after the bottom of the ninth.
Duke catcher Alex Stone was thrown out at home in the bottom of the ninth, the potential walk-off run, after he tried to make it all the way around on a double from teammate AJ Gracia.
Clemson jumped up to fifth, the highest ACC team in the rankings. Arkansas remained first, with Oregon State, Vanderbilt, and LSU rounding out the top four.
Five other ACC teams appeared in the top 25, led by Virginia at 11th and Florida State in 12th. Wake Forest (14th), North Carolina (17th), and Virginia Tech (23rd) also appeared.