How Duke adjusted to beat Missouri softball in first game of NCAA Columbia Super Regional

Marissa Young didn’t hang around.

The Duke coach described the Blue Devils’ game against Missouri softball in the opening matchup of the NCAA Columbia Super Regional as a “chess match.” The two top-10 national seeds attacked each other from the jump, each holding a lead after multi-run innings before the second inning was over.

So, in the bottom of the second, Young made a call.

The coach felt the strike zone wasn’t favoring her starter Jala Wright. She wanted to throw out a different look. After just 1.2 innings, out of the game went Wright, her indomitable starter with a 1.09 ERA, and in came Cassidy Curd.

Curd didn’t let up a hit in the following 5⅓ innings, and No. 10 national seed Duke defeated No. 7 Missouri 6-3 in front of a sellout crowd Friday at Mizzou Softball Stadium. The winner of the series will advance to the Women’s College World Series.

“This is the postseason. It is win or go home, and we have a great pitching staff. We're gonna have all hands on deck,” Young said. “We knew going into this that it would be a chess match between us and Mizzou, and we had both (Curd) and (Lillie Walker) ready to go. It's always an in-game, see-what's-happening (mentality) — see what we need in the midst of the game to make a change.”

It’s not quite ‘check mate,’ but Missouri needs to come up with a rescue plan … and quick.

Curd’s gem has put Missouri on the verge of elimination for the fifth time since the NCAA Tournament started.

The reliever, who is now 12-3 this season with a 1.24 ERA, got out of an inherited second-inning jam with a pop up and put two on base before escaping the third. Then she kept the Tigers off the bases until she walked Alex Honnold to lead off the seventh. She retired the next three Tigers in nine pitches to end the game without allowing a run, or coming particularly close to allowing a run.

The pitching change put the Tigers in a tricky spot.

A game plan for Wright meant a game plan to face a dropping ball at the bottom of the zone. Missouri had some success off of that, as second baseman Maddie Gallagher drove home two runs in two plate appearances and Jenna Laird tacked on another before the second inning was over.

But with the change in the circle came a new style, and the Tigers couldn’t make the in-game adjustment to Curd’s riser.

“We were taking some unbelievable (pitches). (Wright) was making some unbelievable pitches that they get a lot of people to swing at, and we had a really good eye and really good discipline,” Missouri coach Larissa Anderson said. “They made the pitching change, and I felt like we didn't have that same discipline; that we were maybe caught a little off guard in being able to flip that switch on what our approach is.”

After the top three in Missouri’s lineup — Laird, Alex Honnold and Gallagher — the remainder of the Tigers went a combined 1-for-17 hitting over the course of the game.

Curd threw 86 pitches in her relief appearance, striking out eight of the 19 batters she faced.

In short, the change worked.

“All of our pitchers have a different look, and I think that we know that,” Curd said. … “The umpire for sure wasn't in (Wright’s) favor, and (Missouri) had prepped super hard for (Wright) down in the zone, so I was just kind of going in knowing that I can trust my stuff.”

“I think we just had extreme intent against (Wright) at first,” Missouri second baseman Maddie Gallagher said. “We weren’t hunting balls up high, so that was what we were looking for, but then the change of eyesight messed us up a little bit.”

On the other end, Duke showed why it holds the nation’s second-best win-loss percentage, why it won an Atlantic Coast Conference title, and why it breezed through its home regional in three games.

Missouri ace Laurin Krings was tagged for five runs, all earned, on seven hits before she was relieved by Marissa McCann after 4⅔ innings of work. Five of Duke’s runs came with two outs.

Blue Devils second baseman Francesca Frelick hit a two-run home run just inside the left-field foul pole in the second inning, shortly before leadoff hitter D’Auna Jennings had a run-scoring triple to give the visitors a brief two-run lead.

After spending the middle of the game tied with the Tigers, Duke put up the go-ahead runs in the fifth.

Mizzou perhaps had a slim chance to throw out a runner at home, but a fielded ball was dropped by Honnold in center field before she could make a throw. Some nifty baserunning allowed Duke to score another runner in the inning from third, and the Blue Devils added an insurance run in the seventh.

Some mistakes and a game-changing switch in the circle have put MU in a hole.

But … Missouri has been here before. The Tigers faced elimination head on four times in their home regional.

Meanwhile, Duke, in its seventh season as an NCAA program, has one foot in the door of the Women’s College World Series, which begins May 30 in Oklahoma City.

The Blue Devils made their move. Now it’s up to the Tigers to counter, with Game 2 of the super regional set for noon Saturday in Columbia.

“It’s just like last week,” Laird said. “Coach (Anderson) came in (after the game) and said, ‘we've been here before.’ Last weekend, when we lost … we had our mind set to play four games. I mean, we're set on playing two more games — tomorrow and Sunday — and I think the whole entire team believes that.”

This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: How Duke adjusted to beat Missouri softball in super regional opener