After splitting the first two games of this weekend’s series with Duke, the baseball team wasted little time in setting the tone at the plate in Sunday’s decisive showdown at Doak Field.
Sophomore Dallas Poulk, State’s lead-off hitter, jacked a home run to left field on the fourth pitch thrown to him. His teammates fed off the momentum, as senior Matt Payne ripped a two-run homer just two batters later to give the Pack a 3-0 advantage in the first.
“It pumped the guys up,” Poulk said of the early home runs. “Any time you even get on base to lead off the game, it pumps the guys up. It kind of set the tone.”
But Duke refused to go down quietly, answering with two runs in the second inning on redshirt senior pitcher Eryk McConnell.
The Pack responded with a second-inning tear that would put the Blue Devils away for good, scoring six runs in the inning. The highlight of the offensive output featured senior Ryan Pond hitting a three-run triple with the bases loaded, giving the Pack all sorts of momentum with a 9-2 lead heading into the third.
As the game progressed, McConnell began to struggle as the Blue Devils crept back into the game, scoring their final five runs in the third, fourth and fifth innings, and steadily taking away the sense that the Pack would walk away with a blowout.
“[Duke] never played according to the score,” coach Elliott Avent said. “They battled all weekend. I’ll tell you, that’s a good ball club. They play the game the way it’s supposed to be played, and they hit a couple balls hard and had a couple right where they wanted. The next thing you know, they hit a couple runs, and a couple more, then you look up and it’s 10-7.”
Avent brought in redshirt junior Joey Cutler in the fifth, and Cutler provided relief for McConnell, who had allowed seven runs on 11 hits in 82 pitches. Cutler allowed only one hit and one walk and tallied four strikeouts in two and two-thirds innings. Sophomore Jimmy Gillheeney closed the game for the Pack, allowing two hits in two innings, doing enough to hold off the Blue Devils for the series win.
“Joey Cutler really came in at that point and settled things down for us,” Avent said. “Then Jimmy came in and topped it off in the eighth and the ninth.”
According to Pond, the team responded from Friday’s 4-1 loss to win the series, as it made necessary adjustments at the plate to earn the wins.
“Sometimes this team tries to get too much at the plate, and we’re at our best when we just take it one at-bat at a time,” Pond said. “We’re all good hitters on this team, but when you try to do too much, you start pressing, and you’re not yourself. When we’re relaxed, we’re as good as anybody in the country at swinging the bat.”
State will face East Carolina on Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. at home — a rivalry Poulk said the team anticipates greatly.
“It’s a big game. The crowd is awesome. It’s just a lot of excitement built up for this game,” Poulk said. “It’s kind of funny because you grow up playing against most of the guys in-state, and just playing against them is a nice rivalry.”
