A hot start with the bats and a hot start on the mound by Josh Hartle means Wake Forest is still alive in the College Park Regional.

The Deacons cranked three home runs in the first inning and got a season-high seven innings from Hartle to beat Long Island University 10-4 on Saturday in an elimination game of the NCAA tournament.

“We’re not discouraged or worried that we dropped that first game,” Hartle said. “We feel like we play our better baseball when we’re hungry and starving and want to win and need to win. So … I was confident going into this game.”

Wake Forest (41-18-1) will play the loser of Saturday night’s game between Connecticut and host Maryland on Sunday in another elimination game. If the Deacons win that one, they’ll play again Sunday night against the winner – and would need to win that game, plus a game on Monday to win the regional.

“We battled back (Friday), gave ourselves a chance to win,” coach Tom Walter said. “We don’t shy away from the challenge, we’ve got to get one tomorrow and survive and advance.”

Wake Forest staved off elimination behind a strong performance from Hartle, which also helps the Deacons’ pitching situation moving forward in the regional.

Hartle’s last start was May 20 at N.C. State, having been the odd man out of the rotation with last week’s Tuesday-Friday split of ACC tournament games.

That start 15 days ago was Hartle’s best since the first three weeks of the season, and his outing against LIU was perhaps better.

The big development that’s made Hartle more effective? The freshman developed a cutter between starts at UNC (on May 14) and at N.C. State. He said he toyed with the cutter in the fall without much progress, but that he and pitching coach Corey Muscara revisited it last month and after just a few days, Hartle had added a fourth pitch to his fastball-curveball-slider repertoire.

“I started throwing it two or three days before my outing against N.C. State,” Hartle said. “I threw it at N.C. State, threw it well, and it just came naturally to me. Usually I can pick up things kind of fast, I’m fortunate in that.”

All due respect, it’s one thing to be a fast learner and another to learn a new pitch and deploy to this level of success.

“I don’t know anybody at that age – I mean, Josh is really good at manipulating the baseball, we’ve seen that from the day he stepped foot on campus,” Walter said. “For him to add a cutter after North Carolina and pitch the way he did against N.C. State is pretty special.”

Hartle allowed four baserunners – never more than one in an inning – through the first six innings. LIU (37-21) spoiled the shutout with a leadoff double that scored after a couple of grounders in the seventh, but Hartle exited after pitching a season-high seven innings and allowing one run, three hits and two walks, with five strikeouts.

The Deacons needed Hartle to stymie the Sharks because after a boisterous start, Wake’s offense was quiet for about half of the game.

Wake Forest came out hot, with three homers in its first six batters amounting to a 4-0 lead. Michael Turconi hit a two-run homer after Tommy Hawke led the game off with a walk, and Brendan Tinsman and Brock Wilken hit solo shots to chase LIU starter Jalen Wade after he recorded just two outs.

Wake’s top four of the lineup – Hawke, Pierce Bennett, Turconi and Tinsman, in that order – was the same from Friday to Saturday. Against UConn, that quartet was 3-for-17 without driving in a run; against LIU, the same group was 11-for-20 with eight RBI.

“I think we were just putting better barrels on balls, better at-bats together,” Tinsman said. “I think we were swinging it a lot better than yesterday.”

The Deacons couldn’t sustain their hot start against reliever Nick DeSalvo, who held them scoreless until the sixth inning.

That was when Wake Forest broke the game open with another four-run inning, with station-to-station RBI singles by Hawke and Bennett, and then a two-run single by Tinsman.

Wake Forest added a couple of insurance runs in the ninth on an RBI double by Lucas Costello and a sac fly by Bennett. LIU got the runs back on a two-run homer in the ninth by Jack Power, but Jacob Grzebinski got out of the inning without any further damage.

Notable

Walter confirmed what was said on the TV broadcast, that Sunday’s elimination game will be started by Teddy McGraw.

McGraw has arguably been Wake’s best pitcher over the last month. In his last five appearances (four of them starts), the sophomore has pitched 23 innings and allowed five runs, 10 hits and 13 walks, with 21 strikeouts. It’s lowered his ERA on the season from 6.26 to 4.31.

If Wake Forest wins in the afternoon, it’ll play again Sunday night. That game would likely be started by Seth Keener or Reed Mascolo, both of whom started mid-week games for the Deacons this season and haven’t pitched yet this weekend.