What does Duke baseball need to do to win?

Let's get to some college baseball. Duke and Virginia have wasted the first inning without scoring in Charlottesville, and that's OK. It is still 0-0, a rematch of a series about six weeks ago in Charlottesville in which Duke took two out of three. Darren Vaught, who is no stranger to ACC baseball, jumps on with us to help us talk about this. Alright, we've just six outs in the books.

No big deal. Give me your your keys to this series. If you will. Yeah, I think it's it's going to as weird as it sounds, the way Duke has positioned their pitching staff this season. I think it's going to be important in this three game stretch that they get a little bit of links out of their starters. Andrew Healy is a freshman left hander starting for them today. He's been as long as like five innings on the season, but Adam, you and I have talked to Duke. In previous visits that Duke this year, I mean, they've really adopted the Tampa Bay Rays mindset of using openers, and they've had certain games where they use nine guys at a time, and it's to their success. I just it's a youthful bullpen that they have relied heavily on so far this season. Guys who this time last year, their high school seasons were done a month ago.

So this is it's fair to say this is the longest season. A lot of these guys have played that they that they depend on. So I think it's gonna be really important for guys like Healy today. Ryan Higgins for Duke to get maybe to the fourth or fifth inning at least. I mean, it sounds crazy to think that that's like a stretch with this Duke team. Virginia's lineup is just is too good, right?

They're going to capitalize on some of the youth later in games, and I think that's the big one for Duke is getting linked out of the starters. The longest outing from any starter or any pitcher for the Blue Devils was in the clincher against Coastal Carolina when Alex Gao went four innings. He went for in a start. I believe it was the Sunday start in Charlottesville back in April. He's not getting the start today.

I'm sure he'll be. He'll get the ball either tomorrow or on Sunday, but I mean that has been there. Duke's longest outing to that point had been what? Two and a third innings, right? Two and a third out of a lefty specialist who came out of the bullpen, right? Otherwise they just don't go longer than two innings. I mean, their average start or a starting pitcher this season was right at three innings for the season, and that even seems a little bit high. It's them having their ace, Jonathan Santucci, for a lot of the beginning of the season, and he's the kind of guy. He came in their only bona fide starter. He could get you into a sixth, maybe even a seventh inning at times. That's really sort of skewed the numbers up. But no, I mean, they definitely don't want to get you to a third time through the order if you're a starter, and in most cases, if you're a reliever, you are not going to see somebody twice at the plate.

Darren Vaught is joining us here on the Adam Gold Show. Duke and Virginia are, I don't know, seven outs into the opener of their Super Regional. Winner gets to the College World Series. We've spent a whole bunch of time talking about pitching. Meanwhile, both of these teams are elite offensively.

Duke, the last time there, I believe it's seven home runs in the series in Charlottesville. Each week we dive into the mind of the con artist and covering the secrets behind the biggest Ponzi schemes you've never heard about. We're not talking about Bernie Madoff or Charles Ponzi.

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Own work, own play, own life. Learn more at chevy.com. Find new roads, Chevrolet. Yeah, and that's what Duke does. I mean, if you like sort of the modern tilt of the game of baseball that is, you know, pitching, they get a lot of strikeouts their top 10 in the country. In that regard, their offense when it's at its best, they hit long balls. And that's sort of the duality of this Duke Blue Devils team.

Virginia's a little bit more balanced and sort of, um, I guess just a little bit more spread out with the way that they produce both offensively and defensively. Um, it's much more of a batting average team. Virginia, I believe to this point has the seventh highest batting average in the country. They do swing and hit some, some pretty deep balls. I mean, Jake Galoff has, has been there forever. It seems like he's going to be a first round pick. Kyle Teal, the ACC player of the year is their catcher. He hits plenty of home runs as well, but those are two primarily gap to gap guys. They're going to get extra bases a lot and keep things going.

Um, so it's a, it's an interesting clash between these two. And I mean, it was a really good three game series series during the regular season. Um, I expect it to be good here. I'm just happy because no matter what the ACC gets a team in Omaha and hopefully if Wake takes care of business the way they should, and I expect them to, that means we'll have two in Omaha and for the conference overall speaking, that's not, that's not too bad. But does it count if those two teams are Wake Forest and Duke-Darren?

Don't we need the, I'm just kidding, of course. But that would be something else if it was Duke and Wake. And Virginia is obviously excellent. So I'm not, I wouldn't complain about either team. I obviously want Duke to win.

Chris Pollard has done a ridiculous job creating just a great baseball program where there wasn't one before. But Wake is just a machine. I don't know if I would bet on Alabama. Get it? You don't have to play along with me.

I'm a jackass. I'll make jokes about Alabama and betting on baseball. Darren Vaught, you're a gentleman.

Enjoy your trip wherever you're going. I appreciate your time. And we lost them.

So I didn't even have to apologize for the joke. It's just me. There you go.

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