Deacons fall in 9th inning of regional opener
Wake Forest will again have to play the long game if it’s going to win a road regional.
The Deacons lost 6-5 to Kentucky in the opening game of the Morgantown regional on Friday afternoon at Kendrick Family Ballpark.
Wake Forest (38-20) will play an elimination game Saturday afternoon against the loser of Friday night’s game between 1-seed West Virginia and 4-seed Binghamton. That game is slated for a noon start, though it’s subject to change.
This rollercoaster of a game saw Wake Forest score the first three runs, Kentucky score the next five, and the Deacons score the next two.
That sent the game to the ninth tied at 5-5, with solo blasts in the sixth and eighth by Andrew Costello and Dalton Wentz, respectively, knotting it up.
Fifth-year senior closer Will Ray entered for the ninth and allowed a one-out single to Jayce Tharnish. He stole second and third with two outs, and scored when Ray spiked a breaking ball that catcher Matt Conte couldn’t handle.
The Deacons went down 1-2-3 in the ninth. Wake Forest out-hit Kentucky (32-21) by 10-5 and there were no errors in the game.
But four Deacon pitchers combined for five walks, three wild pitches and two hit batters. Kentucky’s three-man effort on the mound allowed none of those.
Chris Levonas pitched five innings and allowed one run, in his last frame. He gave the ball to Rhys Bowie with a 3-1 lead and that’s where things got wobbly for the Deacons.
Bowie hit the first batter and walked the next two. He notched a strikeout and was ahead 1-2 when Braxton Van Cleave looped a soft-hit ball into left field, scoring two and tying the game at 3-3. The Wildcats’ other two runs came on a wild pitch and sacrifice fly.
There were no issues with how Wake Forest started the game.
Levonas went 3-up, 3-down to start the game. Javar Williams doubled to lead off the bottom half. He scored on Kade Lewis’ one-out single, with left fielder Carson Hansen unable to make the catch.
Wentz’s single put runners at the corners and meant three of the first four Deacons had hits. But good starts are just one slow grounder away from ending — as was the case for Conte’s double play grounder up the middle.
That was the game’s only run until the bottom of the fourth, when Conte made amends by blasting a two-run homer off of the scoreboard in left field.
After Kentucky took a 5-3 lead in the sixth, Costello teed off on a homer in the bottom of the inning to cut the deficit in half.
