WINSTON-SALEM – Chase Burns established an early tone and sustained it through a 16-strikeout masterpiece, the stuff worthy of a Friday night ace in the ACC.

The tone of the fourth inning changed with two outs and Wake Forest associate head coach Bill Cilento calling a timeout to talk with Jack Winnay.

And then the score changed later in that inning when the freshman outfielder who’s referred to as “Tone” coaxed a three-run homer over the right-field fence.

Antonio Morales’ homer broke a tied game in the bottom of the fourth inning and was plenty enough support for Burns in Wake’s 4-2 win over Clemson on Friday night at David F. Couch Ballpark.

Burns has been every bit of the ace that Wake Forest (34-16, 13-12 ACC) has needed this season and in the biggest start of the season (so far), he had his best stuff.

Against the ACC’s highest-ranked team, with Clemson at No. 2 in D1Baseball’s top 25 this week.

“I don’t know, to be honest,” Burns said when asked if it was his best game of the season. “Every outing, you’re going to work on things. Just going to find what I can do to be better and take that next step.”

The next step is simply replication.

Burns (10-1) struck out four of the first six batters he faced, which gave him the program’s single-season record for strikeouts (he now has 156 this season). Rhett Lowder held that mark (was 143) for all of 323 days.

The Tennessee transfer struck out the side in the third, punctuating it with a 100 mph pitch to end the inning, Clemson’s Alden Mathes swinging through it.

Clemson’s first run — and hit — of the game was Jacob Hinderleider’s leadoff homer in the fourth, making it 1-1. To that point, Burns had struck out seven of 10 batters he’d faced, and the other at-bats were a double play grounder, a pop up and a grounder fielded by himself.

Wake Forest didn’t waste time — well, there’s a dual meaning here — in responding.

Seaver King and Jake Reinisch were both retired on first-pitch groundouts to start the bottom of the fourth. Before Winnay came up, Cilento called a timeout and came down from his spot coaching third base to talk things over with Winnay.

“We just went over our plan again. And we were just trying to slow the tempo down. It wasn’t necessarily, ‘You’ve gotta do this, you’ve gotta do this,’” Winnay said. “It’s just, ‘Hey, let’s take a second, give Burns a little bit to rest, try to get in his head a little bit and treat it like a new inning, almost.’”

Winnay walked on five pitches. Coming up behind him, Adam Tellier walked on five pitches. They were two of the three walks by Clemson’s Ethan Darden (5-3) in the game; before Friday, he had issued nine walks in 50 1/3 innings this season.

Morales came up in a big spot and delivered with his third home run in the last 13 days, the first he’s hit at home.

It was every bit of a Couch homer, going an estimated 323 feet down the right-field line and being aided by a crosswind that favored anything in the air to that side of the park.

“If I’m being totally honest, when I swung, I looked to the right because I thought it was a foul ball,” Morales said. “I look up and I saw it take off up there. I mean, with the wind going, blowing out today, if you put any backspin on the ball, it has a chance. …

“That’s the definition of a Couch homer. … When the wind is blowing out, those are the best days to hit. You can miss a ball a little bit, get it in the air and still see it fly over the fence. Just part of playing here.”

Back to Burns — in part because Wake’s offense did nothing of consequence for the rest of the game, in part because of how dominant he was — the only runner who reached in the fifth or sixth was a hit batter on a breaking ball that didn’t break.

Cam Cannarella led off the top of the seventh with a single and after a strikeout and groundout, Burns issued a four-pitch walk to bring the tying run to the plate.

That was when coach Tom Walter made a slow walk to the mound and the sellout crowd of 3,514 grew restless and boisterous.

He wasn’t making the walk to pull Burns, though.

“If I tried to take him out, it would’ve been a fistfight and I won’t win that one. So, I had to leave him in,” Walter said with a laugh. “I knew that’s what he wanted but I wanted to hear it from him.”

Burns has only been a Deacon for one season, but he knew as much.

“No matter what, I was going to fight for my spot,” he said. “I knew it was all kind of like, for show. He just kind of came out there, gave me a breather, told me to rest and that was my last hitter no matter what. It’s always good to hear that.”

Typically when a pitcher hears that, he can empty the tank with velocity. That wasn’t the case here, as Burns threw three sliders to Nolan Nawrocki to record his career-high 16th strikeout (including his two seasons at Tennessee).

That set off a wild celebration from Burns, including a few fist-pumps, the 6-3 righty jump-skipping off the field and through his teammates, firing his glove into the dugout.

“When you go in the dugout and he’s just screaming and yelling, everyone just feels that and everyone starts getting hyped up,” Morales said. “His energy definitely helps us out, it’s contagious, for sure.”

Zach Johnston relieved Burns to start the eighth. The sophomore lefty gave up three straight one-out singles to the top of Clemson’s (37-11, 17-8) lineup, the last of which was an RBI single by Blake Wright.

Johnston came back with a three-pitch strikeout of Cannarella, inducing a hellacious defensive swing for the punchout. And then closer Cole Roland entered and recorded a three-pitch strikeout of his own to strand two runners.

Roland struck out the first batter in the ninth but he reached because of a dropped third strike — the third of the game, after Burns had two in his first five batters. That threat was erased with a 4-6-3 double play on the next pitch, and Roland got a flyout to end the game and earn the fifth save of his abbreviated season.

Winnay hit a solo homer in the second inning for the game’s first run. So, he circled the bases once and reached on a walk two other times; only Tellier and Nick Kurtz also reached base multiple times, each of them notching a single and a walk.

EXTRA BASES: Wake Forest will be without Michael Massey in this series, as previously reported. Walter said Massey threw Friday and felt good, but that he has a bulging disk in his back. He’s expected to return against N.C. State next week as a reliever. … Burns’ previous career-high in strikeouts was 15, which he notched earlier this season at Virginia Tech. … With the mention of Lowder’s strikeout record, it’s worth mentioning he was promoted to Double-A in the Reds’ organization earlier this week. … There were at least two members of the Kansas City Royals in attendance. They have the sixth pick in July’s draft.