Cal Baseball: Golden Bears Drop First Ever ACC Matchup Against Duke Blue Devils
Cal opened the series on Friday with a 14-1 win in 7-innings, but lost back-to-back games to lose their third consecutive series this season.
The California Golden Bears Men’s Baseball team set off to Durham, North Carolina, to face the in-conference opponent and defending ACC champions Duke Blue Devils for their first ever ACC baseball series. Cal and Duke last played in 2016, when the Blue Devils hosted the Golden Bears for a Pac-12/ACC cross-conference series to open up the season, just as Cal had hosted Duke in 2015 to begin that season/year.
The Blue Devils have started the year a couple of games above .500, entering into Friday evening’s matchup against the Bears. Still, a series loss against Cincinnati, a series opener loss to Cornell, an away loss at Campbell, and a home loss against Liberty have dropped Duke out of the NCAA DI Top 25 rankings. In contrast, the Golden Bears enter Friday evening (afternoon for us West Coast viewers) at 6-6 after dropping back-to-back series against Houston and Santa Clara.
Friday, 3/7: Bears up to Bat
The California Golden Bears traveled over 2,800 miles to North Carolina on Wednesday night. They were hosted at Team USA’s Baseball training facilities for some late night practice and workouts before their weekend games. The Duke Blue Devils would go to Preseason Golden Spikes Award watchlist candidate and starting pitcher Kyle Johnson for their opening game against California, though Johnson has struggled to begin his sophomore season, suffering losses to the Bearcats and Big Red in matchups that the Blue Devils were heavily favored to win.
Leading off for the Golden Bears at Jack Coombs Field was second baseman Jarren Advincula, who took the first pitch of Cal’s ACC in conference play into right field for a base hit. Johnson went inside on his next pitch to Seth Gwynn but hit him and put two runners on for Cade Campbell, now moved up and batting in the three slot of the Bears lineup. Johnson hung an 82mph breaking pitch over the plate, and Campbell drove it to left field for his sixth of the season, putting his RBI total at 18 for the season, and the Bears ahead 3-0 in the top of the 1st with no outs. Ryan Tayman followed up with a single before Johnson recorded his first out via a Moutzouridis strikeout on a fastball at his chin’s height, only to give up a two-run home run to Dominic Smaldino after getting him to chase an outside fastball that he was able to muscle-over the center field wall and give the Bears a quick 5-0 lead before Johnson retired Schmidt and Thomas to end the rally.
Having established their rotation for the season, Mike Neu and the Golden Bears staff went to their game one starter Austin Turkington, who gave up three earned runs in 3.1 innings last week in his loss against Santa Clara. Turkington opened the bottom of the 1st inning, giving up a leadoff home run to 2024 ACC-Academic All-American Wallace Clark before retiring the next three batters.
Cal kept the offense rolling into the 2nd inning with a leadoff home run from Alex Birge, who had no home runs in his collegiate career before joining Cal via the transfer portal, and how he already has four in his R-Jr. season. Kyle Johnson was able to get Advinicula to fly out to center after going down in the count 2-0, but hit Seth Gwynn with another pitch and was subsequently removed from the game as the early season struggles continue for the lefty southpaw. Henry Zatkowski would come in relief but would give up an RBI double to Cade Campbell before striking out Tayman looking and getting Moutzouridis to lineout to short, ending the inning with Cal up 7-1.
Turkington would have his best outing yet this season, as he cruised through the middle innings, only giving up three hits, two walks, one HBP, and allowing one run via the Clark home run while striking out 10 batters. Duke’s three hits and single run would be the least amounts they have recorded in the 2025 season thus far.
Cal continued to dominate at the plate with a 4th inning rally that was started by an Alex Birge single to right, with him advancing to third off of a double down the left field line by Jarren Advincula, and scoring from a Seth Gwynn RBI-Sac fly. Campbell would plate Advincula home with a base hit, and Tayman would keep the pressure with a single of his own to put two runners on for the Blue Devils to make another pitching change, this time to Fr. Jack Hendrick, who was the No. 24 ranked high school player out of the state of 2024 class in North Carolia. Hendrick’s first batter, Moutzouridis, doubled off the wall in left center field to score Campbell, with Tayman advancing to third. Moutzouridis and Tayman would both go on to score in the inning, giving the Golden Bears a 12-1 lead, and in need of holding a 10-run lead through 7 innings to end the game early via mercy rule.
Alec Birge led off the top of the 5th inning with another home run, his fifth of the season, and Ryan Tayman would hit his first home run of the season with a solo shot to left in the top of the 6th. Turkington would remain in the game for the Bears for all 7 innings, getting a complete game victory and improving to 2-2 on the year and lowering his ERA to 4.15. Cade Campbell finished the day going 3-5 at the plate with five RBIs, and Alex Birge finished 3-4 with 2 RBIs from his solo shot home runs. Cal would finish the game with 14 runs on 17 hits. Mike Neu said after the game that:
"There's definitely something special to getting your first win in the first ACC game. It's such a great league, and they're a really good team. Any time you can get a win against a good team on a Friday, that's big, but we've got to come back tomorrow, turn the page, and be ready to play another tough opponent" (via calbears.com).
Duke drops to 8-6 (0-1 in conference) while Cal moves to 7-6, and the 1-0 ACC vibes are great heading into Saturday.
Saturday, 3/8: Duke Capitalizes on Cal’s Defensive Disaster
Mike Neu, Cal’s supporting staff, and players have said it before. I’ve said it as well; games will be won by doing “the little things” right/correctly. Defensive mistakes cost the Golden Bears a close game that was tied through 5+ innings, as Cal went to starting pitcher Gavin Eddy to try and gain a two-game lead over the Blue Devils in this season’s matchup. Duke’s Ryan Higgins got the start for the Blue Devils and held the Cal offense to no runs through the top of the 1st after surrendering a triple to Seth Gwynn but got Advincula, Campbell, and Tayman to all strikeout swinging.
Gavin Eddy was coming off a recent loss against Santa Clara, where he pitched 5.1 innings and only gave up one hit and one run but walked six and hit one batter in Cal’s 2-4 loss to the Broncos. He started Saturday’s game by giving up a lead-off walk to Wallace Clark, who advanced to second on a groundout to short and then to third on a throwing error by Cade Campbell. Clark would score on a base hit by AJ Gracia before Eddy would get Yu to ground out to Campbell and end the inning with a 0-1 deficit.
Carl Schmidt was able to get on base with a two-out double in the top of the second after Higgins retired Moutzouridis and Smaldino on back-to-back pop-ups to right field, and a Jacob French base hit to right was able to force a play at home that was too late, and Cal tied the game 1-1. Duke would try and respond by getting a runner on via another error by Campbell to start the bottom half of the inning as well as a Clark walk, but would leave two men stranded on base and Eddy would keep the game tied going into the bottom of the 4th inning.
Higgins came out for the top of the 4th inning and got Smaldino to strike out looking on an 0-2 changeup down the middle, as well as Schmidt to fly out to right field before giving up another single to Jacob French and ending his afternoon with 3.2 innings pitched, five hits, one run, one walk, and four strikeouts. Graduate and All-Ivy league transfer Reid Easterly from Yale University came in to relieve Higgins and got out of the inning after giving up a base hit to his first batter faced (Birge).
Duke’s Andrew Yu led off the bottom of the 4th inning with a home run off Gavin Eddy to give the Blue Devils a 2-1 lead, but the Bears responded immediately in the top half of the 5th with a Cade Campbell double and PJ Moutzouridis RBI-single to keep the score even. David Shaw would relieve Eddy in the bottom half of the 5th inning with a runner on first, making this his fourth appearance of the season. Shaw would give up a base hit to his first batter, left fielder Tyler Albright, but got Gracia and Yu to fly out to end the inning, leaving two runners on and the game tied at 2-2.
Easterly retired the Bears in order for the top of the 6th, and Duke would retake the lead off of a leadoff Ben Rounds walk, a passed ball, and a throwing error by Advincula on a base hit and attempt to catch the runner at first on his turn towards second base that would score Rounds and put Duke ahead for the remainder of the ball game. The Blue Devils would score once more as Jake Berger lined a double over Smaldino at first base to put Duke ahead 4-2.
The Bears would respond with two fly outs and a strike out in the top of the 7th, while Duke would get Gracia on base to open up the bottom half of the inning by getting hit by a pitch, advancing to second on a wild pitch, and then to third on ANOTHER error by Cal’s defense, this time by Smaldino. Shaw’s evening ended there as Logan Piper made his fourth appearance of the season out of the bullpen, this time getting his first batter to ground out to Moutzouridis at short but allowing Gracia to score, and then gave up a double to (now playing outfield) Kyle Johnson, intnetially walking Clark to load the bases, and loses a 3-2 battle with Berger and walking in Duke’s sixth run of the day.
The Blue Devils’ reliever, Owen Proksch, came in to finish the game, getting the Golden Bears to go down in order after walking Schmidt to lead off the inning, and Duke took game two 6-2, with the game-winning run scoring via errors. Head coach Mike Neu stated that:
“We (Cal) didn't play very clean, and when you do that, you're kind of leaving the door open” (via calbears.com).
Cal and Duke play one more game in the rubber match of the series, with the Bears’ Ethan Foley and Duke’s Andrew Healy going toe-to-toe to try and win the series and begin ACC play 2-1.
Sunday, 3/9: Another Series Loss
The California Golden Bears and Duke Blue Devils both looked to finish their first ever ACC-matchup at Jack Coombs Field with a rubber match win going into their weekday matchups against out-of-conference opponents. Cal will be traveling back to Berkeley to host former Pac-12 conference-mates Utah, while the Blue Devils will stay home and host George Mason for two games before they travel west to play at Sunken Diamond at Stanford.
The Blue Devils went to starting pitcher Andrew Healy, who won his last start against North Carolina A&T State, for a “get-away” bullpen game. Healy started strong in the top of the 1st, only letting one runner (Campbell) on base via walk before shutting the Bears’ next four batters down in order.
The Golden Bears have relied upon the bullpen for their final games of the series in each of their last matchups, so there was no difference for that in Sunday afternoon’s game. Ethan Foley was able to work through a bases-loaded jam in the bottom of the 1st inning without giving up a run but surrendered a two-run homerun down the left field line to Macon Winslow that gave the Blue Devils a 2-0 early lead. Cal would claw back in the top of the 3rd with a one-out four-pitch walk to French, who would advance to third on a double by Advincula. Seth Gwynn would ground into a fielder’s choice that would score French, but that would be all that Cal would respond with as Gwynn would be forced out at third base on a groundball by Campbell to end the inning.
Foley would finish his day after the 3rd inning, where he retired the Blue Devils in order on nine pitches. Foley gave up four hits and two earned runs while striking out three and improving his ERA to 3.68 and total innings to 14.2. Cal’s offense would tie things up in the top of the 4th, with back-to-back singles by Tayman and Moutzouridis to open up the inning, and Tayman scoring on a throwing error by Healy on a bunt play. Healy’s day would end there, and he would be relieved by Ryan Calvert for his sixth relief appearance of the season. Calvert would leave two runners stranded and end the Bear’s offensive push there with a tie game at 2-2 heading into the bottom of the 4th.
Spencer Dessart relieved Foley, as is the tradition from the last two series Cal has played, and he struck out his first two batters before giving up a double to first baseman Sam Harris, but left him stranded at second as he got Winslow to pop up to Advincula to end the inning still tied at 2-2, but Cal would go down in order again in the top of the 5th, whereas Duke’s Clark singled through the first and second baseman to start the inning, and scored on a two run home run by D1Baseball Preseason All-American Ben Miller.
The Bears would gain one back in the top of the 6th thanks to back-to-back doubles by Ryan Tayman and PJ Moutzouridis, but a pitching change to Edward Hart gave the Blue Devils the upper hand, and Hart was able to escape the inning with no further damage and the lead still intact. Cole Clark would relieve Dessart in the bottom half of the 6th (leaving him on the hook for the game’s current outcome as a loss), and Clark struggled out of the pen for the Golden Bears on Sunday. Clark was able to get Harris to pop up to Moutzouridis before walking Winslow and getting Wallace Clark to ground into a fielder’s choice, but hit Berger with two outs to put two men on base for a Ben Miller single and his third RBI of the afternoon to put Duke up 5-3.
Cal would get no more offensive production for the remainder of the game as the only four batters to reach base would all be stranded without scoring, while the Blue Devils would go on to score two more insurance runs in the bottom half of the 8th off of a Ben Miller RBI single to left field and an Albright double to left. Miller ended the game going 4-5 with his two run home run and three RBIs. Cal would go on to lose the game and series to Duke for the third time in program history and the first time as members of the ACC.
Cal drops to 7-8 (1-2 ACC) for the season, while Duke advances to 10-6 (2-1 ACC) heading into their Tuesday, 3/11/2025, games. The Golden Bears will host the Utah Utes at 6:00 PM PT in Berkeley at Evans Diamond at Stu Gordon Stadium; tickets currently range from $5 to $7 online here. Cal continues ACC play on Friday (3/14) against the nationally ranked No. 23 University of Virginia Cavaliers for a three-game series at home in Berkeley before keeping their travel minimal and local to Saint Mary’s on the 18th and Stanford (ACC) on the 21st - 23rd.
(All videos used belong to ESPN/ACC Network/ACCNX+)