Duke baseball drills two grand slams to power past Florida State, claim ACC Tournament title

The Duke Blue Devils unleashed on offense and powered past the Florida State Seminoles with two grand slams to win the ACC Championship Game. In the end, Duke beat Florida State by a sore of 16-4 in a massive victory.

Entering the game, there was an expectation that both teams would heavily lean on their bullpens and that’s exactly what happened, with Florida State’s starter Carson Dorsey leaving the game in the second inning. Duke, meanwhile, turned to James Tallon who pitched three innings after struggling out of the gate.

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A major theme of the game became traffic. Duke was getting traffic on the bases and taking advantage of it. That led to some crooked numbers, including a five-run second inning and a grand slam off the bat of Ben Miller in the fourth inning. At the time, that gave Duke a 9-2 lead.

From there, the Seminoles tried to plug away at Duke’s lead. However, the pitching continued to struggle for the Seminoles and the Blue Devils kept taking advantage of those mistakes. That included in the sixth inning, when with the bases loaded Duke struck for another grand slam. That one was off the bat off Devin Obee. 

At that point, the game was 14-4 in the top of the sixth inning. Still, the Blue Devils kept adding on from there, with another Ben Miller home run. That one was a two-run shot and brought the game to its final score of 16-4.

In the regular season, this game would have ended based on the 10-run rule early. However, that rule isn’t in effect for championship games and the Blue Devils took full advantage of the opportunity to keep on swinging the bats.

Florida State and Duke met for a three-game series in Durham at the end of April. There, the Seminoles took two out of three from the Blue Devils, though Duke did run-rule Florida State on the Sunday game.

Coming into the ACC Championship Game, Florida State won games against Georgia Tech, Virginia, and Wake Forest in the ACC Tournament. They were the fifth seed a year after missing the NCAA Tournament and the ACC Tournament entirely. Duke, meanwhile, beat Virginia Tech, NC State, and Miami on their way to the ACC Tournament Championship. The Blue Devils made their run as the six seed.

Both Duke and Florida State came into the game with their respective spots in the NCAA Tournament fairly secured. However, both were looking to find a way to secure their spots as hosts for the Regionals, which in his latest Field of 64 Projections, On3’s Jonathan Wagner predicted both teams would be able to earn.