Deacons’ season ends with loss to WVU
Wake Forest lost its grip on a close game in the sixth inning.
Hence, the Deacons’ baseball season has ended.
West Virginia piled up six runs in the sixth, cruising to a 10-5 win against Wake Forest in an elimination game of the Morgantown regional on Sunday afternoon at Kendrick Family Ballpark.
The Mountaineers (41-15) face Kentucky tonight. If WVU wins, those two will play again Monday with a trip to the super regional round on the line.
Wake’s season comes to an end at 39-21. After a 10-game winning streak earlier this month, the Deacons lost four of their last five games — all four of those against power-conference teams.
Halfway through this game, it was tied at 3-3. WVU edged to the front on Sean Smith’s two-out single in the fifth.
The wheels came off the Deacons in the sixth.
Troy Dressler (8-2) gave up hits to the first three batters of the inning — the middle one a dribbler that clipped third base. Evan Jones entered and faced three batters, allowing a walk that loaded the bases and two RBI singles that pushed the score to 7-3.
Ryan Bosch relieved him and got a sacrifice fly, threw a pickoff to second base into centerfield, threw a wild pitch, and allowed an RBI double that ran the host team’s advantage to 10-3.
Coupled with a meager offensive day, that was too much for the Deacons to overcome.
Wake Forest only had five hits, and one of those was a two-out double by Javar Williams in the ninth. The Deacons struggled to make solid contact against Dawson Montesa (4-5), who went 7 1/3 innings with seven strikeouts on 122 pitches.
WVU scored the first three runs, all in the second inning. The first of those was on a wild pitch that catcher Matt Conte couldn’t handle; then Tyrus Hall singled into right field with two runners. One of those runners scored because of an error by right fielder Luke Costello.
Wake Forest tied it by getting a run back in the third, Williams driving in Blake Schaaf with a groundout after Schaaf led off the inning with a double. And Conte’s two-run home run in the fourth brought it to a 3-3 game.
