Duke baseball’s NCAA Tournament run ends in Game 3 super regional loss at Virginia

Alex Mooney sat between his teammates Alex Stone and Adam Boucher after the 12-2 loss to Virginia in the Super Regionals — his season officially done. His eye black smudged, Mooney was still wearing his sunglasses and hat, and his eyes red from crying.

“I wouldn’t want to do that with any other group,” he said. “So, I love these guys. It sucks, but you learn from it.”

The three Blue Devils sat restlessly as head coach Chris Pollard spoke on what the 2022-23 season meant to him, the head coach just as emotional as the players. Mooney put his arms around his teammates.

The emotional back-to-back losses against the Cavaliers dashed Duke baseball’s hopes of going to Omaha, while its opponent celebrated their sixth appearance in program history.

“The reality is they just outplayed us,” Pollard said. “They played better than we did the last two days. They’re gonna be,if they play like that, it’d be a very tough out in Omaha.”

Standing triumphant above it all was Virginia pitcher Brian Edgington, a transfer from Elon. Sunday, he tossed a complete game with a season-high 11 strikeouts and one walk. His command of the plate, specifically his splitter, caught the Blue Devils standing and swinging in crucial at bats to keep the momentum with the Cavaliers.

“I think you always dreamed about going into a complete game, but usually very rarely happens,” Edgington said.

Duke took a more matchup-focused approach to pitching in Game 3, and while Charlie Beilenson found his groove in his 3 1/3 innings pitched, head coach Chris Pollard didn’t let the bullpen pitch more than one inning each. Pollard said following Game 2 he wanted to eliminate the two-out runs that previously plagued Duke. The Blue Devils used nine pitchers Sunday.

But Pollard didn’t have much interest in talking about the game itself. He wanted to express the emotions he felt toward his team, and that he reached his goal of reviving Duke as a fierce competitor in the ACC and across the country.

“My hope was that we restore the identity and the culture of the program back to being known for toughness,” Pollard said. “And I have so much gratitude, especially to these three guys beside me, our captains, because they took that to heart.”

Home runs were the Cavs’ catalyst against Duke in Game 2, but in Game 3 it was a bevy of RBI singles. Three straight in the bottom of the second inning put Virginia on the board first, and the Cavaliers added two more runs with another RBI single to make it a 5-0 lead.

It took a while for Duke to respond, but it did. Jay Beshears sent the ball just beyond the left-field wall for a two-run home run in the top of the sixth, momentarily breathing life into the Blue Devils, who were then down just three runs.

But the Cavaliers tacked on four more runs — two more on RBI singles and then a two-run home run from Ethan Anderson to go ahead by seven, 9-2. The Cavaliers tacked on three more runs — two in the seventh, one in the eighth — to make it a 10-run game.

“So when we got punched, being able to punch right back in the next opportunity that we had at the plate,” Griff O’Ferrall said, “just really like even playing field backup and got this crowd back into it.”

The Blue Devils finish their season 39-23 (16-14 ACC).

The Cavaliers move on to the Men’s College World Series, where they will face No. 2 national seed Florida in the opening round.

Mooney watched Virginia’s celebration from the Duke bench, the second time he’s been one win away from the College World Series. There’s no guessing when the Blue Devils will get their turn, but Virginia head coach Brian O’Connor believes it’ll be soon.

“They’ve got a great program, and their day in Omaha, it’s coming,” O’Connor said. “I mean, sometimes your first time when you go there … it happens when you least expect it.”