(Photo via Twitter)
The SEC must be reeling over what Duke pulled off in Athens.
The vaunted Southeastern Conference, which produced national champion Florida last year and annually sends multiple teams to the College World Series, must be stunned right now.
The ninth-ranked Georgia Bulldogs won’t sleep for a week after they let leads get away in two regional games Monday and lost both of them to Duke, which had never advanced to the super regional in its very mediocre history on the diamond.
But since Chris Pollard became the Blue Devils’ coach in 2012, they have been both competitive and resilient. You just don’t go to the regionals in Athens, lose your opening game to Troy and then battle all the way back from the losers’ bracket to win the trip to Texas Tech next weekend.
I watched the last few innings of the second game, when Duke nursed a 6-4 lead before adding two insurance runs in the top of the ninth. The same reliever who had shut down the Bulldogs in the first game, came back to get six straight outs and shock Georgia on its home field again.
Look, this just doesn’t happen in college baseball, whose post-season is set up to send the highest-seeded and highest-ranked eight teams to Omaha. But No. 18 Duke, with a skinny left-handed pitcher named Stallings and an outfield slugger named Griffin Conine, an Andrew Benintendi look-alike who was drafted earlier in the day by the Toronto Blue Jays, outscored their last four opponents 47-15 after trailing Campbell 8-1 in an elimination game the second day of the regional.
What must Georgia fans be thinking? We lost to Duke in baseball in our own park? What was this, basketball? Or the GE College Bowl? The Bulldog players were bigger, stronger and meatier than the Blue Devils, who still wear plain uniforms that look like throwbacks to the 1960s, except for the royal jerseys.
Duke and Carolina are the only ACC teams left in the NCAA baseball tournament, heading into its second weekend with the 16 regional sites now down to eight, which will produce the teams going to Omaha. The Tar Heels are set up perfectly, hosting Stetson, which has never been this far in the tourney.
Wouldn’t it be something after all these years of talking about a Duke-Carolina Final Four match-up, if it didn’t turn out to be in Omaha? Duke’s already taken a big first step toward that reality.
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