Homer happy Duke blasts Coastal Carolina, advances to NCAA Tournament super regional
The home runs that have propelled Duke’s offense all season pushed them into the NCAA Tournament’s super regional round Monday night.
The Blue Devils added to their school-record total of homers with three more in a resounding 12-3 win over Coastal Carolina in the Conway Regional championship game at Springs Brooks Stadium in Conway, S.C.
The regional championship is Duke’s third in Chris Pollard’s 11 seasons as the Blue Devils’ head coach. The Blue Devils (38-22) return to college baseball’s round of 16 to play No. 7 national seed Virginia in the Charlottesville Super Regional this weekend.
“It was a lot of fun to compete here this weekend,” Pollard said. “I thought our guys were really tough, really as resilient as they have been all year. I can’t think of a group in 24 years that I’ve had more fun being around just because of their spirit and their energy, the way they care about each other, the way they enjoy being around each other. It’s infectious.”
MJ Metz, Alex Stone and Gio DiGiacomo all homered for the Blue Devils over the first five innings as they built a 7-0 win over Coastal Carolina (42-21), the No. 10 national seed and regional host. Those three blasts gave Duke 107 home runs for the season, including 12 in its four Conway Regional games.
Metz got Duke’s scoring started with a solo home run in the second inning. It was his fourth home run of the regional after he hit three in Duke’s 12-3 win over UNC Wilmington on Friday. The graduate transfer was named the regional’s most valuable player despite playing with a torn ACL in his left knee.
“MJ, it’s been kind of like a Disney movie all weekend,” Pollard said. “We didn’t know even Thursday morning if he was going to be on the active roster.”
Stone hammered a two-out, three-run home run in the third inning to provide some breathing room for the Blue Devils. After Luke Storm’s two-run single in the fourth, DiGiacomo hit an opposite-field home run to left in the fifth inning giving Duke a 7-0 advantage.
That was more than enough runs as Duke pitchers limited Coastal Carolina to just one hit over the first eight innings, quieting the crowd of 5,102 that was the largest in Brooks Stadium’s history.
Metz was 3-for-5 for Duke while DiGiacomo, Jay Beshears and Alex Mooney all had two hits apiece. Metz and Stone drove in three runs each.
Alex Gow pitched the first four innings for Duke, striking out seven while allowing only Nick Lucky’s fourth-inning a double. Charlie Beilenson, Fran Oschell and Aaron Beasley held the Chanticleers, who averaged nine runs per game this season, hitless over the next four innings before Coastal ruined the shutout effort in the ninth.
Now, the Blue Devils return to Charlottesville where they took two of three from the Cavaliers in ACC play back in late April. The NCAA is expected to set the schedule for the best-of-three Charlottesville Super Regional on Tuesday.
“I told our guys, so we’re going back to a place where we’ve had success,” Pollard said. “You know, we’re comfortable that we know we can play well. But that doesn’t guarantee that we’re going to play well this time around. But we can build off of what we did.”
The all-ACC matchup means, for the 17th consecutive time, the league will have at least one team in the College World Series.
In two previous super regional appearances, both on the road, Duke lost in three games in 2018 at Texas Tech and in 2019 at Vanderbilt.
Now, after finishing below .500 in 2022 while not even qualifying for the ACC Tournament, the Blue Devils are two wins away from the school’s first College World Series appearance since 1961.
