Through the first two days of its three-game weekend series against Duke, the Terrapins baseball team got the big hits it needed when it needed them most.
Left fielder Michael Montville hit a walk-off, two-run home run in a 4-2 win Friday. Eleven Terps recorded hits in a 21-2 drubbing of the Blue Devils on Saturday. Then pinch-hitter Jake Stinnett pulled a line drive into left field for an RBI double to give the Terps a 3-2 lead in the seventh inning yesterday.
For a resurgent Terps team, none of this seemed all too surprising. The weekend was going according to plan – until Duke scored three runs in the eighth inning, avenging the two losses and leaving Bob “Turtle” Smith Stadium with a 5-3 win.
“It was a low-scoring game,” coach Erik Bakich said. “So they were able to have one big inning, and the one big inning … really gave them enough of a cushion because we didn’t execute well enough offensively to be able to handle that. That was really the difference.”
Duke starter Robert Huber frustrated the Terps (24-14, 7-11 ACC) all afternoon with a repertoire of off-speed pitches that kept the Terps’ lineup in check. The right-hander pitched a complete game, scattering three runs, five hits and two walks over 116 pitches. He induced a handful of weak pop-ups from the Terps and mixed in six strikeouts.
“We were probably, you could say, about an inch from completely exploding on the guy,” second baseman Kyle Convissar said. “But it really didn’t work out for us today.”
The Terps’ David Carroll went for another solid outing against the Blue Devils (14-23, 6-12), pitching 7.1 innings and allowing three runs on seven hits. That seemed like enough to win, but the Blue Devils got to reliever Charlie Haslup (3-3), who quickly allowed an inherited runner to score on a sacrifice fly.
With the game tied, Duke pinch-hitter Will Piwnica-Worms put a single through the right side of the infield to score two and push the game to its 5-3 final score.
“We realize we didn’t play good enough to win today, and that’s going to happen,” Convissar said. “We’re going to put this behind us. I’m probably actually going to do a frustration lift, but we’ll put this behind us.”
The late loss seemed to put the Terps’ great performances from the two days before on the backburner. On Saturday, Convissar keyed an offensive performance that saw the Terps score their most runs in a conference game since 1999. He went 4-for-5 with a home run, double, two RBI and five runs scored while also reaching base via a walk and hit by pitch.
Right-hander Brett Harman started in the eventual blowout and continued his ever-steady season, allowing two runs on four hits in six innings while striking out eight.
“It was great,” Harman said. “Guys had a lot of quality at-bats. Kyle Convissar just started off the game with a great double and had a great day. It just carried over. Hitting is contagious and it just seemed like everyone built off of each other.”
Runs were a tad bit harder to come by Friday, when the Terps erased a 2-0 deficit with runs in the sixth and seventh innings against Duke’s Marcus Stroman, the NCAA leader in strikeouts.
In the 10th, designated hitter Ryan Holland walked before Montville lifted a high fly ball to left field that landed on top of the Terps’ indoor batting cages to give the team a walk-off win for the second straight weekend.
In his second career start Friday, left-hander Jimmy Reed pitched nine innings, yielding nine hits and two runs while striking out six in front of the year’s largest home crowd (1,855).
“It was definitely a lot of fun,” Reed said. “It’s always great when you have a 10th man in there. It was definitely a lot of fun. Our team tries to feed off that a little bit and it proved out to help us.”
In the end, though, the Terps weren’t left mobbing a teammate at home plate yesterday, as they had Friday, or walking off the field light-heartedly, as was the case Saturday. Instead, they quietly shuffled off the field, leaving Bakich to think only about what went wrong.
“I’m confident in every game,” Bakich said. “We’ve got a good team and we’ve got good players and we’ve got good leaders. We’ve got a lot of good intangibles about this team and I expect to win every game that we play. So when we don’t come out on the positive side of things, I’m shocked.”
dgallen@umdbk.com
