WINSTON-SALEM – After eight straight weekends of high-intensity ACC games, Wake Forest’s exam week non-conference weekend can feel like an exhale before the final push of baseball’s regular season.

In this case, this weekend was just what the doctor — or professors — ordered.

Wake Forest beat Western Carolina 10-5 and 17-1 in a Sunday doubleheader, wrapping up a five-win week and getting exactly what it wanted.

“I definitely think this was a great weekend for us,” junior pitcher Josh Hartle said, having earned the win in Sunday’s first game. “With finals and stuff happening this week, I think it was a good week for us to gain momentum as a team and build confidence.”

Wake Forest (32-16) played a game in three parts to win the first game of Sunday’s doubleheader, and then dominated the second game and ended it in the seventh inning because of the mercy rule.

The Deacons leaned on Hartle in the early innings of the first game while its offense looked for a rhythm. Hartle didn’t make it out of the second inning in last weekend’s start against Notre Dame; he worked through six on Sunday, allowing two runs and looking — feeling, more importantly — more like the version of himself that was arguably the second-best pitcher in the ACC last season.

But more on that later (and below).

Everything about this weekend comes with the qualifier of playing a middle-of-the-pack Southern Conference team. Sweeping Western Carolina hardly guarantees Wake Forest is bound for Omaha; it doesn’t guarantee anything about Wake’s next game, a home matchup against N.C. A&T on Wednesday, let alone a series next weekend against Clemson.

This is a team that had to slug its way to a 10-9 win over Appalachian State and a 15-12 win at High Point earlier this week.

Style points would be nice; they’re also a secondary concern for a team that’s dropped four non-conference games this season and sits at .500 in the ACC.

“Great wins, really great start out of Josh Hartle, which we needed in a doubleheader day,” coach Tom Walter said. “And then really happy with Dave Falco, really happy with how Dave threw.

“Our bullpen in the first game was a little shaky, obviously we don’t want to tighten that game up like we did. That happens in college baseball. Really happy with our offense most of the day. … It was a good sweep, we needed it.”

This is the time of year when you need to know which pitchers can be counted on and Wake’s situation is getting murkier.

Michael Massey didn’t pitch this weekend and has dealt with an injury all season. It’s why he’s only thrown more than 70 pitches twice in 10 appearances.

In his absence, David Falco Jr. — Maryland’s closer last year who’s held that role earlier this season for Wake Forest — started for the first time in his career. He excelled, pitching four scoreless innings and getting help from double plays in the second and fourth.

“I think Walt said it great during the week, two traveling mid-weeks after a traveling weekend to Notre Dame, end of the night Wednesday we’re just exhausted but we’re able to come out with two wins,” said Jake Reinisch, who homered in both games on Sunday. “And then get rested up for this weekend, where we played great baseball. Pitching, hitting, I’d say definitely a good week, a little reset.

“I know there’s a lot of stress with finals going on but it was definitely a good week for our team.”

Here is a recap of both games in Sunday’s doubleheader:

In the first game, Wake Forest trailed until the bottom of the fifth in what was a slow start offensively.

Western Carolina got a run in the first inning on a couple of two-out singles up the middle, with a wild pitch in between that moved Nate Stocum up to second base. The Catamounts got another run in the third, again with a couple of two-out hits after Hartle had mowed through the first two batters.

Wake’s only run of the first four innings was a consolation run; the Deacons loaded the bases with no outs in the third, and Seaver King hit into a double play that scored a run.

The dam was broken in the bottom of the fifth, and it started after the first two batters were a strikeout and pop up. Marek Houston walked and Nick Kurtz doubled, bringing up King, who had grounded into two double plays in his two at-bats.

King lifted a two-run single to right-center. Reinisch followed that up with a two-run homer — his 13th of the season, five more than he had in his first three seasons combined — and it was a 5-2 lead after five.

“You’ll take them whenever you get them,” Reinisch said when asked which homer was his favorite. “But I’d say the first game, got off to a little bit of a slow start but had an opportunity to extend the lead, so I’d say that one.”

Hartle pitched around a leadoff single and two-out walk in the top of the sixth, finishing his day. After the walk, he got a mound visit from pitching coach Corey Muscara; he got out of the inning by striking out Western Carolina’s Jack Spyke.

It was Hartle’s (5-2) first win since a March 21 game against Louisville and dropped his ERA to 5.40; he was 11-2 with a 2.81 ERA last season.

“I think early on, in my delivery there was something wrong with it,” Hartle said of his struggle this season. “I think we overcomplicated a lot of things as a staff and as a whole, trying to find a bunch of answers and I think letting go and kind of working on believing and being confident in myself was really the biggest thing. …

“I was able to create instead of react to situations, the way I wanted to,” on Sunday, he added.

Wake’s five-run sixth gave the Deacons an eight-run lead. Houston and Kurtz had back-to-back RBI singles, and then King cued a ball down the right field line for a triple, driving both of them in. King scored Wake’s last run of the game on a passed ball.

Wake’s bullpen left some cause for concern. Josh Gunther entered for the seventh and gave up a one-out walk and a two-run homer by Drew Needham that traveled an estimated 454 feet; it hit the light pole in right field and bounced onto the field.

Gunther allowed another walk and single before he was replaced by Crawford Wade, who got a strikeout and then had one of those inherited runners score because of an error by King at third base.

Wade escaped a bases-loaded jam thanks to Cam Nelson’s full-extension diving catch on the warning track in right-center field.

That saved two, maybe three runs, and Kurtz saved another two in the eighth when he made a leaping snag of a ball headed down the right-field line. There were runners at second and third with two outs and Kurtz needed every bit of his 6-foot-5 frame to make that catch.

It might have been curving foul — though Kurtz’s snag turned that into a hypothetical. Houston, from shortstop, made a sliding play to the right of second base for the game’s final out.

“Three really good defensive plays,” Walter said. “I don’t think the ball that Nick caught would’ve been fair, I think that’s probably foul, but Cam Nelson’s ball, for sure (saved runs).”

In the second game, Falco stranded two runners in the first inning and that was about as dramatic as it got because Wake Forest sent 12 batters to the plate in the bottom of the inning.

The Deacons’ first eight batters reached base — three of them via walks and five of them via hits. Each of the hits altered the score, with Jack Winnay hitting a two-run double and RBI singles coming from King, Adam Tellier, Antonio Morales and Nelson. Wake Forest got a seventh run — the extra point, if you will — on Kurtz’s RBI groundout later in the inning.

Reinisch led off the bottom of the second with a solo homer, his second of the day. King added an RBI in the third, and Morales and Cameron Gill drove in runs in the fourth that made it 11-0.

The Deacons poured it on while emptying the bench; by the game’s end, 10 players had recorded at least one RBI and 10 had accounted for 17 hits, three of them by Winnay.

Most important might have been Falco’s appearance, delivering four zeroes for a pitching staff that had already logged 36 innings since Tuesday night.

“He said he came in after a rain delay and started a game in the conference tournament once. He counted that as a start,” Walter said. “In his mind, it’s his second (career start).”

Blake Morningstar gave up a solo homer in the fifth, and Joe Ariola and Haiden Leffew pitched scoreless innings to finish the game and series.