Duke softball wins first Super Regional game in school history to sit one win from WCWS

With Friday’s 6-3 win over the Tigers, the Blue Devils are one win away from their first-ever trip to the Women’s College World Series.

For the first time in Duke softball history, the Blue Devils have won a Super Regional game.

After back-to-back Super Regional sweeps at the hands of UCLA and Stanford, Duke defeated Missouri 6-3 on Friday to take a lead in the best-of-three series.

Missouri struck first with one run in the opening inning, but the Blue Devils surged ahead in the second inning. With two outs and one runner aboard in the top of the second, down to her final strike, senior Francesca Frelick launched a go-ahead home run over the wall to give Duke the lead.

The home run sent a message to the Columbia crowd that, despite being the lower seed in the series, Duke wouldn’t go away quietly. The next two batters kept the run going, too. Freshman Amiah Burgess singled and then raced all the way home when sophomore centerfielder D’Auna Jennings tripled into the right-center gap.

Two runs for the Tigers knotted the game again after two innings, but the Missouri offense halted from there. Sophomore star Cassidy Curd waltzed into the circle with two outs in the bottom of the second, forced an out, and then forced a ton more.

She allowed two Missouri base runners in the third, one thanks to an error and another who was hit by a pitch, before three consecutive one-two-three innings in the fourth, fifth, and sixth innings.

Curd ended the afternoon with one walk, no hits, and eight strikeouts in her 5.1 innings on the mound, completely silencing the home team and crowd.

The Blue Devils pushed ahead in the fifth inning when sophomore second baseman Aminah Vega one-hopped a double off the wall for a go-ahead run. Gisele Tapia roped in another run later in that same inning, and Duke earned its last insurance run with a steal from D’Auna Jennings after Ana Gold bought her some time in a pickle.

Duke now needs to win one of the next two games in Columbia to book its first-ever appearance in the Women’s College World Series, the final eight-team bracket for the national title. The Blue Devils are 4-0 so far in the NCAA postseason after they swept through the Durham Regional.