Duke baseball powers past host Georgia to move one win from NCAA regional title
The Duke Blue Devils went down to Georgia and are doing damage again.
Two Wallace Clark home runs and a three-run home run from Ben Miller lifted Duke to a 6-3 win over Georgia in the NCAA tournament’s Athens Regional on Saturday night.
The win lifts the Blue Devils (39-19) into Sunday’s regional final where they will face either top-seed and host Georgia or Oklahoma State. Those teams play an elimination game at noon on Sunday, with the winner needing to beat Duke twice to claim the regional title.
For Duke, this weekend is reminiscent of the 2018 season when it won a regional title at Georgia’s Foley Field to reach the first of three Super Regional appearances in coach Chris Pollard’s coaching tenure.
Saturday, the Blue Devils used their powerful bats plus strong pitching from starter Kyle Johnson and relievers Mark Hindy and James Tallon to beat Georgia and stay unbeaten in the Athens Regional.
A lefty, Johnson pitched the first six innings for the Blue Devils. He struck out six over five innings, allowing solo home runs to Ryland Zaborowski in the second inning and Henry Hunter in the sixth.
Zaborowski’s blast put Georgia on top 1-0 but the Blue Devils bounced back in the third inning when Miller blasted a 455-foot home run over the batter’s eye in dead centerfield giving Duke a 3-1 lead.
Clark extended Duke’s lead to 4-1 in the fifth inning with the first of his two solo home runs.
After Hunter cut Duke’s lead to 4-2, Hindy replaced Johnson and Georgia had runners at first and third with no outs. But Hindy escaped the danger when Robbie Burnett lined into a double play and Zaborowski struck out looking.
That was the first of three consecutive innings when the Bulldogs put the potential tying run on base only to come up empty.
In the seventh inning, Georgia put the first two runners on before Hindy struck out Daniel Jackson, got Nolan McCarthy to ground into a force play and struck out Hunter.
With Duke up 4-2 in the eighth inning, Georgia put a pair of runners on with two-out singles off Tallon. But he struck out Kolby Branch to end the threat.
Clark’s solo home run in the ninth ignited a two-run rally that gave Duke insurance runs with a 6-2 lead.