GRANVILLE — It began with West Virginia center fielder Brandon White crashing into the wall. It ended with West Virginia’s back against the wall.
In between, Duke sophomore Bryce Jarvis managed to out-pitch all-American Alek Manoah, leading the Blue Devils to a 4-0 win over host West Virginia in the second round of the Morgantown Regional.
The Mountaineers need to beat Texas A&M at noon Sunday to keep their season alive. Freshman Ryan Bergert (2-0, 2.03 ERA) will start for the Mountaineers.
Duke is in the driver’s seat for the regional championship. The winner of the WVU-A&M game will need to beat the Blue Devils Sunday night to force a winner-take-all game on Monday afternoon.
Manoah was far from his usual dominating form, allowing four runs on four hits and four walks in 6 innings.
“They’re bringing it every day. They’re just humans,” said WVU assistant coach Steve Sabins, who took over for the ejected Randy Mazey in the third inning. “Maybe his fastball command wasn’t there early. Maybe he wasn’t lining his slider quite as much as he normally does. Taking him out certainly wasn’t easy. I had to stay pretty firm on that one.”
Mazey was ejected in the bottom of the third inning after arguing a call at home plate that was overturned by video review.
Manoah threw home to catcher Ivan Gonzalez for a would-be force out that would have ended the inning without a run scoring.
“To turn around and make a 90-foot throw [as opposed to] just making a 30-foot throw right in front of me, it was just common sense to me,” Manoah said.
Gonzalez had the ball well before Joey Loperfido’s sliding arrival, but the review determined Loperfido’s foot hit the plate before Gonzalez’s.
Duke coach Chris Pollard did not actually expect to win the review when he asked for it.
“I thought when the play happened, Loperfido was out,” Pollard said. “But I thought it was close enough. The way replay works, any play at the plate is not charged to the team or coach. You have two times you can kind of throw the flag, so to speak, or initiate a challenge. But any time there is a play at the plate, that is an automatic review if requested.
“So I felt like, even though it appeared from my angle that Loperfido was out, I felt like we had nothing to lose by sending that to challenge. So, we kind of just took a chance and we got the overturn.”
Manoah said Mazey’s ejection had a positive effect on the team’s energy. They just failed to capitalize on that emotion.
“He usually doesn’t get like that, so that shows you how much this team cares,” Manoah said. “Seeing him go out fired the guys up. But that guy threw it well on the other side.”
Though he doesn’t have an arm like Manoah’s, Jarvis did have total control of the strike zone. He didn’t issue a walk until the eighth inning and struck out 11 while allowing six hits in his 8 innings of work.
“Most right-handed pitchers don’t have the change-up going for both righties and lefties, but he had it going both ways today and was keeping us off-balance,” said right fielder Darius Hill, who still managed to go 3-for-3. “Then, he was locating his fastball enough in the middle innings just to keep us off the change-up and was able to finish us at the end.”
Duke got all the offense it needed on a first-inning play that turned into a scary moment for other reasons. White crashed head-first into the wall attempting to track down a long Michael Rothenberg fly ball that bounded off White’s glove for an RBI triple.
White was on the ground for several minutes, but stayed in the game. But Manoah uncorked a wild pitch after the lengthy delay, allowing Rothenberg to score from third.
West Virginia only threatened twice against Jarvis, with Hill getting stranded at third in the first and sixth innings.
