OMAHA, Neb. – The message from Bill Cilento to Danny Corona wasn’t quite as simple as “settle down.”

Wake Forest was down one run with two in scoring position when Cilento, associate head coach who coaches third base, called timeout to talk with Corona. That was after Corona had chased a high fastball on the first pitch.

“He told me with that pitcher, I should actually be looking down,” Corona said. “So I saw him go down in the zone and just tried to drive one up the middle.”

Two pitches later, Corona did exactly that; he drove a ball up the middle to drive in the game-winning run in Wake Forest’s 3-2 win over Stanford in the opening game of pool play at the Men’s College World Series for Bracket 2.

Wake Forest (53-10) will face either LSU or Tennessee at 6 p.m. (7 E.T.) Monday night back here at Charles Schwab Field Omaha in a game that will decide which team has the upper hand in pool play. LSU and Tennessee played Saturday night, and the loser will face Stanford (44-19) on Monday afternoon in an elimination game.

Seth Keener (8-1) picked up a win by striking out four of the five batters he faced, and Camden Minacci earned his 13th save of the season when second baseman Justin Johnson started a 4-3 double play to end the game.

The Deacons are on the winner’s side of the bracket thanks to Corona’s clutch single, which featured the visit from Cilento as a means of calming him down.

“I just tried to give him a little reset, I felt like it went a little fast on him,” Cilento said. “I told him I was proud of him and he deserved the at-bat, ‘Just go hunting for something down.’”

It was Corona who was down not too long ago.

Corona was a regular in Wake’s lineup for the first half of the season but, as Adam Cecere became healthy, Corona’s at-bats became fewer. He had 12 at-bats in a combined 10 games between the last half of April and the beginning of May.

Getting back into the lineup — and swinging a hot bat — meant Corona moving past some self-pity.

“It’s kind of an interesting case study because … Danny spent a better part of the year maybe feeling a little sorry for himself, quite honestly,” coach Tom Walter said. “And once he just got past that and just got back to work — we knew he could hit and we knew our best lineup would be with him in it.

“But we had to get him past that and kind of past himself and get him out of his own way.”

That’s been successful, to say the least. Ten of his 13 homers have come since May 7, and Saturday’s game was the first time in five games that he hasn’t homered.

He does have 19 RBI in the last five games, though, including the two that mattered most Saturday.

“I think just sticking to my approach, trying not to chase too much out of the zone and getting more pitches I could drive,” Corona said of his process to heat up lately.

While Corona needed the brief timeout during his at-bat, it was a timeout of nearly an hour and a half that the Deacons needed.

Lightning was detected in the area around 3:15, with Carter Graham hitting a two-out double off of the wall in the top of the seventh.

The game didn’t resume until after a 1-hour, 28-minute delay — Wake’s third significant delay of the NCAA tournament (Maryland game in the regional, Game 1 against Alabama in the super regional).

“We call ourselves the kings of the delay,” third baseman Brock Wilken said. “Every time we have a delay, we come out with so much energy. Our vibe was just immediately switched. It’s probably something that wasn’t expected from the other side, and that’s what great teams do during delays.”

Pulling back the curtain, Walter said they talked at beginning of the delay about situational strategies and at the end, there was discussion of “let’s win the delay.” In between there were card games played, music blaring and some general relaxation that helped a team Walter said was tight and nervous early.

Wake’s lineup before the delay had three hits: Wilken’s 31st homer of the season, tying J.D. Drew’s single-season ACC record (in 1997), and back-to-back groundball singles by Tommy Hawke and Pierce Bennett in the third.

Otherwise, there were a lot of confused swings against off-speed pitches by Joey Dixon and weak contact. When the Deacons did get barrels on balls, they were often outs; in the sixth, reliever Drew Dowd snagged a ball blasted right back at him, and Corona was retired when Graham, Stanford’s first baseman, dove for a ball and it ricocheted to second baseman Drew Bowser, who threw to Dowd covering first.

“We had a little fun in there, played some music, got the vibes back on our side and went out there with a better plan and I think executed better,” Johnson said.

This was third game of the College World Series and it made the event 3-for-3 in delivering one-run, late-inning thrillers after a pair of 6-5 games — Oral Roberts beating TCU and Florida beating Virginia — on Friday.

Execution was going to be crucial and for the majority of the game, Stanford executed a little better than Wake Forest.

Stanford leadoff hitter Eddie Park started the game with a single to left on Rhett Lowder’s first pitch, eventually scoring when Lowder hit Malcolm Moore with a 2-2 pitch.

Wilken’s leadoff homer in the bottom of the second got that run back. It was a nice way for him to celebrate his 21st birthday.

The Cardinal retook the lead on a looping single by Graham in the third, which scored Tommy Troy from second after a single and a balk — Lowder’s first of the season.

That 2-1 difference is where the score remained until Corona’s single.

“It means a lot to us to one, even be here, and two, to win a game,” Wilken said. “Not too many people get to even be in this situation, so we’re super grateful for the opportunity to come here and get to play on this field with a bunch of great talent.

“History is not our radar screen, we’re looking forward to the next day we play and in the future.”