Published Apr 12, 2024
Wake Forest baseball weekend recap
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Conor O'Neill  •  DeaconsIllustrated
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The start of Wake Forest’s baseball series at Boston College went as well as could have been scripted and it even ended an inning early.

The second game was off to a good start but the Deacons gave up a four-run lead and lost on a walk-off homer.

The series finale saw Nick Kurtz stay hot — Saturday’s game is the only one he’s gone homerless in Wake’s last nine — and cruise to a series victory.

Wake Forest beat Boston College 13-1 at Eddie Pellagrini Diamond on Friday, with the game ending in the eighth inning because of the ACC’s 10-run rule. BC came back with a 5-4 win on Saturday to even the series out, and Wake Forest won Sunday’s game 9-3.

It puts the Deacons (24-11) at .500 in the ACC, at 9-9, ahead of a crucial series against Florida State next weekend.

Here is a recap of each game this weekend:

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Wake Forest 9, Boston College 3

On Sunday, Kurtz hit his 12th homer in Wake’s last nine games to break a 1-1 tie in the third inning, and his 13th homer in that span was a nice capper in the ninth.

Wake’s star first baseman was 2-for-3 with three walks. Marek Houston was 4-for-6 with two doubles atop the lineup, driving in the Deacons’ first run of the game. In between Houston and Kurtz, Adam Tellier was 2-for-4 with two walks and scored twice.

Kyle Wolff gave BC (19-16, 7-11) an early lead with an RBI double in the first. That was the only run scored against Michael Massey, who pitched three innings and gave up three hits and five walks.

Haiden Leffew replaced Massey and gave up a run, getting two outs. Blake Morningstar (2-0) followed him, picking up the win by pitching 2 1/3 and retiring all seven batters he faced.

Josh Gunther and Will Ray pitched scoreless seventh and eighth innings, respectively, and BC got one run against Cole Roland in the ninth.

Freshman outfielder Javar Williams was 2-for-5 with two RBI, the only Deacon other than Kurtz with multiple RBI in the game. Jack Winnay and Jake Reinisch also drove in runs.

Boston College 5, Wake Forest 4

On Saturday, Wake Forest took a four-run lead to the bottom of the seventh before BC tied the game in that inning, and won it on Cameron Leary’s walk-off homer in the ninth.

BC got a one-out single by Parker Landwehr to start the seventh-inning rally, and then a double by Sam McNulty. Both of those hits came off Josh Gunther, who relieved Josh Hartle in the sixth. Hartle pitched 5 2/3 of scoreless ball, giving up four hits and three walks, striking out eight.

Will Ray entered for Gunther and hit a batter, then gave up an RBI single to Leary. Ray got a strikeout and gave way to Zach Johnston, who gave up Nick Wang’s two-run single that tied the game at 4-4.

Wake Forest had a pair of one-out singles in the eighth, and got those runners to second and third with two outs, before Austin Hawke struck out. Those were Wake’s last baserunners.

Leary’s homer led off the bottom of the ninth, an opposite-field shot against David Falco Jr., who had recorded the final out of the previous inning.

Wake Forest scored two runs in the first on a triple by Nick Kurtz and a sacrifice fly by Jack Winnay. The Deacons’ other runs came on Cameron Nelson’s RBI groundout in the fourth and Marek Houston’s solo homer in the seventh.

Wake Forest 13, Boston College 1

On Friday, the Deacons scored in six of eight innings, including nine runs in the last three.

Kurtz was 2-for-5 with a double and home run. His long shot was a two-run blast in the seventh, giving him a team-high 14 this season and putting Wake Forest up 9-1.

Seaver King also homered, going 3-for-4 and missing a double for the cycle. He has homered in four straight games.

Jack Winnay was the third Deacon with a multi-hit game, going 2-for-4 with two RBI. Wake’s production was across the board, with every starter recording at least one hit and scoring once, and six of nine starters driving in runs.

That was plenty for Burns (7-1), whose only negative was that he had eight strikeouts in 6 1/3 innings. The eight punchouts matches a season low and snaps a string of six straight starts with double-digit strikeouts.

Burns allowed two hits and two walks, with the run scoring in the fifth. He worked his way out of a situation in which the leadoff batter reached on an error and the next batter had a single, getting a sacrifice bunt, groundout that scored a run, and a strikeout to end the inning.

Crawford Wade was Wake's only other pitcher, facing four batters to record 1 2/3 innings. He got a double play to end the seventh and notched a 1-2-3 eighth to end the game.