Duke Softball 2026 (Team 9)
- Thread starter loran16
- Start date
Sweep! Duke wins 8-4 despite curd loading the bases with two outs. Phew.
Our pitching walked a knife edge all series
DUKE SOFTBALL Phase 2 Look back and Phase 3 look forward
Kind of stealing this from the basketball threads but I feel softball season could be broken into five phases:
Phase 1: non conference play;
Phase 2: First half of acc play (up through the Stanford series);
Phase 3: Second half of acc play and a few challenging midweek games (Virginia to Clemson);
Phase 4: The ACC Tournament; and
Phase 5: The NCAA Tournament.
We’ve just had our first series of the second half of acc play so this is now phase 3 (Due to passover I couldn't get this post out last week, so it's a week late), and I want to recap how the season has progressed and what we should be looking forward to from here.
After non conference play I basically said there were three major points to sum up this season so far: 1. The offensive explosiveness of our top 5 hitters; 2. The weakness of the bottom 3/4 of the order preventing offensive consistency; and 3. The utter disaster that was our pitching staff. I think those points are a good place to start, although I'm going to combine posts 1 and 2:
The Offense in Review - Far More Balanced and Devasting than Early in the Season:
After Phase 1, you had a clear divide between our offensive lineup. Our top 5 hitters were utterly devastating, with 5 players above 1.000 OPSes - D'Auna Jennings (1.094), Aminah Vega (1.397), Jess Oakland (1.044), Tyrina Jones (1.276) and Layla Lamar (1.476) - and three of those players, in Lamar, Jones, and Vega, were just killing it with power and on-base percentage. Unfortunately, to start the season, the bottom four in our lineup every game was really struggling - we were basically rolling out Kairi, Baker, Shadek, Stafford and a little bit of Matthews out there and many of those hitters had OPS' below .700 and none really above .800 - Kairi had an OPS at .552 for example (eek).
Things have shifted dramatically. Looking just at conference play (15 games), Duke is consistently now rolling the following lineup (in order of our usual lineup):
D'Auna Jennings - .345/.393/.473 (.866 OPS)
Aminah Vega - .354/.467/.667 (1.133 OPS)
Jess Oakland - .409/.518/.705 (1.222 OPS)
Tyrina Jones - .308/.345/.615 (.961 OPS)
Layla Lamar - .293/.453/..537 (.989 OPS)
KK Mathis - .316/.451/711 (1.162 OPS)
Kairi Rodriguez .318/.348/.545 (.893 OPS)
Jayla Stafford .343/.467/.514 (.981 OPS)
Adelyn Matthews .241/.343/.517 (.860 OPS)
Pinch Hitter Gabriella Shadek is also hitting now .375/.364/.500 (.864 OPS).
You'll notice of course we've gone from 5 players above an OPS of 1.000 to just three, which isn't too surprising when facing tougher conference level pitching. Yet one of those 3 - KK Mathis - wasn't even getting regular starts in Conference play - and Jess Oakland has been rocketing up on fire....and while Tyrina Jones and Layla Lamar are no longer destroying everything, they're still hitting near 1.000 OPSes themselves. Only D'Auna Jennings has fallen back significantly, but she's still got near a .400 OBP, which is what you want from her.
Meanwhile, there's no longer really a liability in the lineup. Kairi and Jayla went from OPSes of .552 and .690 respectively to .893 (pretty solid to good) and .981 (very good). Jada Baker has been completely benched, and other than 3 games Matthews was probably hurt and was replaced by the toothless Brooklinn Thomas, Duke has been able to sustain offense 1 through 9, which is something they haven't done in years. The result is that we have in conference play hit roughly .324/.414/.571 for a team OPS of .985. For comparison we were at .958 last year in conference play and .863 in our WCWS 2024 team's performance in conference play. So the offense has been seriously better and it has done so in such a consistent way to allow it to come back repeatedly over the last few weeks, since there were almost no weak spots in the order that would prevent us from getting some offense started.
The Pitching Continues to Struggle Hard:
Duke as a team has an ERA just under 5 in conference play. That’s pretty awful, and it’s not just one pitcher, it’s everyone which is why we’ve tried even to add in a new pitcher this past weekend in KK Mathis, who hasn’t pitched since high school before this week.
The Remainder of the Season (Phase 3):
Duke has the following games left:
Midweek @ Liberty
Away @ UNC
Midweek Home v Top 10 Tennessee
Away @ BC
Midweek Home v Charlotte
Home @ Clemson
It's not the hardest home stretch, but there's some potential landmines. Liberty is having a down year but they have a history of beating top teams, especially at their place. UNC is even worse - by a lot - at pitching than we are but have several of the best hitters in the nation, which will put our 13 game winning streak against them in jeopardy. I'll have previews of both teams out later this week.
Tennessee is our last chance at a clear top tier ranked win, and it won't be easy, as they have some of the best pitchers in the country (most notably senior Karlyn Pickens, but their other pitchers are dominating as well).
BC is basically a trap series - they're awful and we should sweep them. And Charlotte isn't great, but we've lost to mediocre mids before.
Finally, Clemson has disappointed this year but will be fighting for a potential seed (probably not) and is always a challenge.
We've gotten through the toughest part of our schedule for sure, but there's enough here to give us more challenges and Duke will need to try to improve the pitching and keep the offense going if we are not to disappoint late, as we started to do last year. Keeping it going will earn us a seed, and possibly even one in the 9-12 range (I assume a top 8 seed is off the table), which would give us a good shot at moving forward.
Kind of stealing this from the basketball threads but I feel softball season could be broken into five phases:
Phase 1: non conference play;
Phase 2: First half of acc play (up through the Stanford series);
Phase 3: Second half of acc play and a few challenging midweek games (Virginia to Clemson);
Phase 4: The ACC Tournament; and
Phase 5: The NCAA Tournament.
We’ve just had our first series of the second half of acc play so this is now phase 3 (Due to passover I couldn't get this post out last week, so it's a week late), and I want to recap how the season has progressed and what we should be looking forward to from here.
After non conference play I basically said there were three major points to sum up this season so far: 1. The offensive explosiveness of our top 5 hitters; 2. The weakness of the bottom 3/4 of the order preventing offensive consistency; and 3. The utter disaster that was our pitching staff. I think those points are a good place to start, although I'm going to combine posts 1 and 2:
The Offense in Review - Far More Balanced and Devasting than Early in the Season:
After Phase 1, you had a clear divide between our offensive lineup. Our top 5 hitters were utterly devastating, with 5 players above 1.000 OPSes - D'Auna Jennings (1.094), Aminah Vega (1.397), Jess Oakland (1.044), Tyrina Jones (1.276) and Layla Lamar (1.476) - and three of those players, in Lamar, Jones, and Vega, were just killing it with power and on-base percentage. Unfortunately, to start the season, the bottom four in our lineup every game was really struggling - we were basically rolling out Kairi, Baker, Shadek, Stafford and a little bit of Matthews out there and many of those hitters had OPS' below .700 and none really above .800 - Kairi had an OPS at .552 for example (eek).
Things have shifted dramatically. Looking just at conference play (15 games), Duke is consistently now rolling the following lineup (in order of our usual lineup):
D'Auna Jennings - .345/.393/.473 (.866 OPS)
Aminah Vega - .354/.467/.667 (1.133 OPS)
Jess Oakland - .409/.518/.705 (1.222 OPS)
Tyrina Jones - .308/.345/.615 (.961 OPS)
Layla Lamar - .293/.453/..537 (.989 OPS)
KK Mathis - .316/.451/711 (1.162 OPS)
Kairi Rodriguez .318/.348/.545 (.893 OPS)
Jayla Stafford .343/.467/.514 (.981 OPS)
Adelyn Matthews .241/.343/.517 (.860 OPS)
Pinch Hitter Gabriella Shadek is also hitting now .375/.364/.500 (.864 OPS).
You'll notice of course we've gone from 5 players above an OPS of 1.000 to just three, which isn't too surprising when facing tougher conference level pitching. Yet one of those 3 - KK Mathis - wasn't even getting regular starts in Conference play - and Jess Oakland has been rocketing up on fire....and while Tyrina Jones and Layla Lamar are no longer destroying everything, they're still hitting near 1.000 OPSes themselves. Only D'Auna Jennings has fallen back significantly, but she's still got near a .400 OBP, which is what you want from her.
Meanwhile, there's no longer really a liability in the lineup. Kairi and Jayla went from OPSes of .552 and .690 respectively to .893 (pretty solid to good) and .981 (very good). Jada Baker has been completely benched, and other than 3 games Matthews was probably hurt and was replaced by the toothless Brooklinn Thomas, Duke has been able to sustain offense 1 through 9, which is something they haven't done in years. The result is that we have in conference play hit roughly .324/.414/.571 for a team OPS of .985. For comparison we were at .958 last year in conference play and .863 in our WCWS 2024 team's performance in conference play. So the offense has been seriously better and it has done so in such a consistent way to allow it to come back repeatedly over the last few weeks, since there were almost no weak spots in the order that would prevent us from getting some offense started.
The Pitching Continues to Struggle Hard:
Duke as a team has an ERA just under 5 in conference play. That’s pretty awful, and it’s not just one pitcher, it’s everyone which is why we’ve tried even to add in a new pitcher this past weekend in KK Mathis, who hasn’t pitched since high school before this week.
The Remainder of the Season (Phase 3):
Duke has the following games left:
Midweek @ Liberty
Away @ UNC
Midweek Home v Top 10 Tennessee
Away @ BC
Midweek Home v Charlotte
Home @ Clemson
It's not the hardest home stretch, but there's some potential landmines. Liberty is having a down year but they have a history of beating top teams, especially at their place. UNC is even worse - by a lot - at pitching than we are but have several of the best hitters in the nation, which will put our 13 game winning streak against them in jeopardy. I'll have previews of both teams out later this week.
Tennessee is our last chance at a clear top tier ranked win, and it won't be easy, as they have some of the best pitchers in the country (most notably senior Karlyn Pickens, but their other pitchers are dominating as well).
BC is basically a trap series - they're awful and we should sweep them. And Charlotte isn't great, but we've lost to mediocre mids before.
Finally, Clemson has disappointed this year but will be fighting for a potential seed (probably not) and is always a challenge.
We've gotten through the toughest part of our schedule for sure, but there's enough here to give us more challenges and Duke will need to try to improve the pitching and keep the offense going if we are not to disappoint late, as we started to do last year. Keeping it going will earn us a seed, and possibly even one in the 9-12 range (I assume a top 8 seed is off the table), which would give us a good shot at moving forward.
Sorry part 2 about pitching continues here:
And honestly, the pitching peripherals would suggest our pitchers have maybe even been getting lucky with our results - for example in conference play Ava Bradshaw has allowed 23 hits and 10 walks in 13.2 innings (with only 5 strikeouts) and has an ERA of only 4.61, believe it or not allowing 2.5 base runners per inning should result in a higher ERA.
Nor is the issue limited to our younger more raw pitchers: Cassidy Curd has a 5.07 conference ERA - yuck - and isn’t striking out more than a batter per inning (34 in 38.2 innings pitched) to go along with 24 walks and 5 HBPs and a .272 batting average against. That last stat is particularly notable, as usually when Cass has struggled she has remained hard to hit (but was just wild), but she’s been pretty hittable as well in conference play. We’ve relied on her the most but for the most part it hasn’t worked out and Lari Jacquez and Mallory Wheeler haven’t been any better. And let’s be honest the junkballing stuff of KK Mathis is only going to lower in effectiveness as teams get more of her on tape - we saw that with Virginia knocking her a bit on Saturday after having seen her before.
Duke is still searching for a solution here, and against Virginia we tried something new: we switched away from our focus on starters and tried multiple pitchers per game, with Curd pitching in all three games as the closer for the last few innings. It’s similar to what a lot of other teams have been trying - trying to limit how many times batters see our pitchers per game and to get our best pitcher in Curd in every game at the end. Results wise it worked against UVA - we allowed 9 runs in 3 games (which is more than good enough for this offense) - but again there was a lot of luck involved as Virginia left a TON of baserunners on.
It’s getting late to fix this, but it’s clearly the thing holding this team back and giving us the possibility of a collapse. We really need our pitchers and Marissa Young to finally figure this out.
Duke is up to 15 now in Softball America’s poll and is now 15 in RPI, putting us in very firm ground to host. Next up tomorrow at 3 PM is a game at Liberty (it was originally listed as a double header but is now listed as a single game).
Liberty was a team at the fringes of the top 25 the last two years who made its major mark by double eliminating number 1 overall seed TAMU in the tourney last year - a result that the ncaa made sure was less likely to happen going forward by changing the seeding rules. I add all this just to make clear Liberty shouldn’t be overlooked, even as they appear to have taken a significant step back this year - they’re 0-7 against quad 1 opponents like Duke and 1-6 against quad 2.
Liberty hits only .284/.370/.445 as a team so this is a much weaker offense than Duke has been facing on weekends. That said they have a few decent hitters such as Alexia Carrasquillo who is hitting .339/.397/634 with a team high 9 home runs as well as Savannah Jessee (.324/.427/.532) and Brynn McManus (.306/.412/.537). There's also Freshman Dani Lee, who is hitting a monster .481/.588/.815 in just 34 plate appearances and appears to have only recently become a regular.
Pitching wise, Liberty has a 4.40 ERA as a team with a bunch of unearned runs on top of that, so Duke's offense should be able to blow through them. They've used 7 pitchers on the year, but really rely upon Sophomore Camden Anders (72 IP, 3.21 ERA) and Duke transfer Gabriella Mike (72.1 IP, 3.77 ERA). One might imagine Gabriella Mike might want to get some revenge on Duke for not trusting her last year, but it's unclear if we'll see her or not in this midweek game.
Overall, we need to beat Liberty here to not have a let down before a series this weekend at UNC where Duke has far more to lose than win.
Liberty was a team at the fringes of the top 25 the last two years who made its major mark by double eliminating number 1 overall seed TAMU in the tourney last year - a result that the ncaa made sure was less likely to happen going forward by changing the seeding rules. I add all this just to make clear Liberty shouldn’t be overlooked, even as they appear to have taken a significant step back this year - they’re 0-7 against quad 1 opponents like Duke and 1-6 against quad 2.
Liberty hits only .284/.370/.445 as a team so this is a much weaker offense than Duke has been facing on weekends. That said they have a few decent hitters such as Alexia Carrasquillo who is hitting .339/.397/634 with a team high 9 home runs as well as Savannah Jessee (.324/.427/.532) and Brynn McManus (.306/.412/.537). There's also Freshman Dani Lee, who is hitting a monster .481/.588/.815 in just 34 plate appearances and appears to have only recently become a regular.
Pitching wise, Liberty has a 4.40 ERA as a team with a bunch of unearned runs on top of that, so Duke's offense should be able to blow through them. They've used 7 pitchers on the year, but really rely upon Sophomore Camden Anders (72 IP, 3.21 ERA) and Duke transfer Gabriella Mike (72.1 IP, 3.77 ERA). One might imagine Gabriella Mike might want to get some revenge on Duke for not trusting her last year, but it's unclear if we'll see her or not in this midweek game.
Overall, we need to beat Liberty here to not have a let down before a series this weekend at UNC where Duke has far more to lose than win.
Softball America now has us projected as the #12 overall seed, which would be incredible (and might be our ceiling?) given where this season began and how our pitching still is. The 12 is a really nice spot because it gets you in that third bucket of #2 seeds, so you're no longer going to have to face off against the 4 teams who just missed the hosting cutoff. But again that's the benefit - as we also saw with DWBB - with playing so many tough teams, even if you lose those games it won't be that harmful (although losing to BU x 2 and ECU has hurt us a bit).
Let's not lose to Liberty to add to the bad loss bucket.
Let's not lose to Liberty to add to the bad loss bucket.
chrishoke
Member
Duke jumps on Liberty curtesy of a Jessica Oakland
grand slam! 6-0 Devils in the 2nd.
grand slam! 6-0 Devils in the 2nd.
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