The NC State baseball team will hit the road for the first time this season as it travels to Durham to take on the Duke Blue Devils in a weekend series starting Friday, March 12 at the Durham Bulls Athletic Park.
The Wolfpack (4-6, 1-5 ACC) is coming off a series loss to Miami this past weekend, in which it won its first ACC game in the first game of the series but then lost the next two games for the team’s second series loss. The team showed vast improvements last week from the week prior, when it gave up 16 runs in a loss to UNCG and was swept by Georgia Tech, but it is still searching for its first ACC series win.
The Blue Devils (6-6, 3-3 ACC) are coming off an 11-5 midweek home loss to East Carolina, but before that, they won two out of three games in a series win against Pitt. Their only other series win came at the beginning of the season on the road against Coastal Carolina, and they lost two out of three games to Boston College in their only other conference series.
Duke has been a good hitting team thus far this season, ranking tied for second in the ACC with 122 hits, fourth in batting average at .290 and first in the country in doubles with 37.
A player to keep an eye on for the Blue Devils is RJ Schreck, who leads the team in hits, RBIs and home runs and is second in batting average. Another is Erikson Nichols, who along with Schreck, is hitting above .400. The Blue Devils have a total of six players that are hitting at or above .300 with at least 30 at-bats.
Likely to be Duke’s starting pitcher Friday is Cooper Stinson, who has two wins in three starts this season and an ERA of 3.38. The starter on Saturday will likely be Henry Williams, who has two wins in three starts this season with an ERA of 3.31.
One of the keys for the Pack to win this series will be how it plays down the stretch of the games. In several of its losses this season, the Pack has given up leads in the latter half of games and allowed game-breaking innings to its opponents, including innings of seven and six runs against UNCG, an inning of five runs in one of the losses against Georgia Tech and another inning of five runs in the series finale against Miami.
The NC State pitching staff showed general improvement this past week from the week prior, but the group has no easy task this weekend against a good hitting team in Duke.
The Wolfpack bats have shown signs of promise at times this season, recently with a 14-run performance against Campbell and an 11-run outing in the series-opener against Miami. The Pack could be in for another fireworks show this weekend, as the Blue Devils recently gave up 11 runs to East Carolina and 10 runs in a loss to Boston College earlier in the season.
The action begins Friday at 4 p.m. and will continue Saturday at 3 p.m. and Sunday at 1 p.m. All games will be broadcasted on the ACC Network Extra.
