The Virginia baseball team completed their three-game sweep of visiting Duke Sunday afternoon at Davenport Field, riding the arm of junior Chris Gale and the bat of shortstop Mark Reynolds and defeating the Blue Devils, 6-0.
The Cavaliers (13-8, 3-3 ACC) entered the series mired in a three-game ACC losing streak after opening conference play at No. 4 Florida State. Gale, who also started the third game in Tallahassee, pitched 7.0 innings on Sunday.
"I felt a lot better than I did last weekend," Gale said. "The defense played great behind me, and the offense scored some runs so it was a good win for us."
After throwing 6.0 innings and allowing two runs scored on seven hits against the 'Noles, Gale came away with a no decision when Virginia briefly took the lead in the eighth.
Yesterday the right-hander dominated the game against the Blue Devils (12-13, 0-3) from the opening pitch, allowing only three hits and walking just three of the 25 batters he faced in the shutout.
"Duke is somebody who usually finishes right below us in the conference," Gale said after the game. "But luckily the past few years I've been here we've beaten 'em pretty good. It's always nice to get a sweep in the ACC and get back on track."
Sunday's victory marked the second consecutive sweep over Duke for the Cavaliers, who won the three-game set by a combined score of 28-3.
With Gale's pitching silencing the Duke bats, the Cavalier offense provided all the run support Gale needed for the win by the time the every player had taken his first cuts. Junior outfielder Paul Gillispie's RBI single to third base scored senior Chris Sweet in the bottom of the 2nd, and Virginia never relinquished its lead.
Reynolds, the team leader in home runs with four, nearly made headlines as he fell just a double short of hitting for the cycle. Had he accomplished the feat, it would have been the second time in his career to do it.
"Yeah, one time," Reynolds responded to questions inquiring if he had ever hit for a true cycle. "It was in summer ball with a wood bat, but other than that I haven't done it."
The shortstop led off his day with a triple in the first inning, a bloop to centerfield that dropped right before Blue Devil outfielder Senterrio Landrum's glove and rolled past him. His sacrifice fly in the second made the score 2-0, and on his next at-bat he launched the ball deep over the left-centerfield wall's 377 sign. While not as massive as the home run that cleared the "Blue Monster" 408 feet away in dead center against Charlotte on March 9, the crowd instantly knew by the crack of the bat that Reynolds had increased the score to 4-0.
"It was too low -- a fastball right down the middle," said the Virginia Beach native of the home run pitch. "If you throw it there, we're gonna hit it pretty hard."
After being hit by a pitch in the seventh, Reynolds was knocked in by Sweet's single to center. Upon crossing the plate, he showed his appreciation for the Duke crowd's taunts by placing a single finger on his lips and looking in their direction.
"They were talking some crap about our coach and about our play, and it just made me mad so I thought I'd shut 'em up by doing that," Reynolds said of the incident. "I didn't mean to show their team up -- it was just that one guy that was making us mad."
The normally docile home crowd at Davenport showed signs of life during the weekend series that featured Cavalier victories of 13-1, 9-2 and 6-0. Virginia students got into a battle of words with members of Duke players' families and taunts were exchanged.
Reynolds' reaction to the derisive Blue Devil fans could be perceived as a symbol of what the Cavalier bats did to Duke's pitching staff all weekend long. Virginia amassed tallies of 23, 14 and 10 hits in the series -- a combined 33 more than Duke accumulated over the same span.
"I don't think Duke scored maybe three runs this whole weekend," coach Dennis Womack recalled. "If you're gonna hold teams to that, then you're gonna win a lot of games."
The Cavaliers return to action this week with a home-and-home series with James Madison.
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