The Duke baseball team might have said goodbye to its chances at hosting a regional at home on Saturday.
The Blue Devils lost a second straight game to North Carolina at home, this time a sound 14-6 defeat, to end the season with a 35-18 record.
Duke took game one of the series, a rousing 5-3 win to give them the advantage in the series, but the Tar Heels outscored them 20-10 over the rest of the weekend.
With 14 games left on the regular season schedule, head coach Chris Pollard’s team stood 29-11. Duke finished 6-7 with one cancellation the rest of the way, losing its last three weekend series to Florida State, Georgia Tech, and the Tar Heels.
The closing stumbles almost assure Duke will be a No. 2 seed in whichever region they get assigned to. Despite being No. 11 in the most recent USA TODAY Sports Coaches Poll and 16 teams getting the chance to host a region, D1Baseball projected the Blue Devils as a second seed even before the series loss to UNC.
The Blue Devils still have the ACC Tournament, which begins on May 21, to make a statement before the bracket gets released. They finish the regular season with a 16-14 record in conference play, the third-best record in the Coastal division and tied for the sixth-best record in the conference.