CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Through the first four innings, NC State starter Sam Highfill was unhittable. His curveball was clicking and the graduate student fanned four Duke batters in the early going.
Highfill’s command seemed to struggle in the fourth with seven straight balls, but he was able to pitch his way out of the inning, appearing to be back in control on the rubber.
Once he entered the fifth inning, Highfill’s curveball fell off. Instead of making the Blue Devils look silly with his offspeed, it turned into a home run derby in Uptown Charlotte.
Duke’s first hit off Highfill was a solo shot, but that was just the beginning of the damage. The Blue Devils slugged three home runs for a six-run fifth, including a back-breaking 455-foot grand slam, to beat NC State 8-1 Thursday night at Truist Field, ending the Wolfpack’s time in the ACC Tournament.
“It’s been as incredible of a stretch of good baseball of any team that I’ve had a pleasure of coaching,” NC State coach Elliott Avent said. “They’ve been playing well, but that’s a very good baseball team we played and they outplayed us tonight. They’re a dangerous offense.”
Highfill went 4.1 innings with six earned runs on five hits to go alongside his three walks and four strikeouts in the loss. He allowed the bases loaded with two singles and a walk, but Avent elected to leave his righty in to try to get slugger Zac Morris out.
“I thought he was throwing good,” Avent said of leaving Highfill in the game. “He threw good against Duke last time. I think last time we played them, Morris was 0-for-4 with three punchouts. He had him in a good situation, just made a bad pitch with the breaking ball.”
Morris clubbed his only hit off Highfill, the blast to left center that put Duke in the driver’s seat with a six-run lead.
And while Duke’s bats were hot, NC State’s were not. The Wolfpack entered the game with all the momentum in the world after a 19-9 rout of Virginia Tech with 20 hits just 24 hours earlier, but Blue Devils’ left-handed arms shut the lineup down.
It took one trip through the order against starterAndrew Healy to get a base runner — sophomore outfielder Eli Serrano III singled — but graduate first baseman Garrett Pennington grounded into a double play in the following at-bat.
Other than that, well, NC State’s bats were held in check. Healy faced 15 batters — the minimum in his five innings — and only allowed the base knock with four strikeouts. Instead of finding gaps, NC State was sending balls right at Duke defenders and it couldn’t get in rhythm.
“You have a very small margin for error,” said NC State graduate third baseman Alec Makarewicz, who led the team with a pair of hits. “We hit the ball well tonight, there wasn’t a ton of strikeouts, we were just hitting it right to some people. And they had the bigger hits.”
Once Healy’s day was done, Duke fed NC State’s lineup another left-handed pitcher and the Wolfpack’s lefty-heavy batting order struggled to produce. The Blue Devils inserted James Tallon, who worked two innings of one-hit relief.
Though the Wolfpack didn’t find much consistent success against the Blue Devils, NC State did have a productive ninth inning. Makarewicz hit a two-out single before junior catcher Jacob Cozart clubbed an RBI double to right center field.
As the Pack prepares to host an NCAA regional next week, Avent thought his squad showed signs for it to grow from in the final frame — Derrick Smith’s 1-2-3 inning. If the Pack can carry that into the Big Dance, Avent was confident it could do some damage.
“We played as good as we could play and we kept playing,” Avent said. “We kept battling as we always do. … If they keep playing like this, I’ll take our chances to see how this season continues.”
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