Wake Forest is headed to Knoxville for the NCAA tournament.

Wake’s baseball team is the No. 2 seed in the Knoxville regional, which begins Friday. The Deacons will play No. 3 seed Cincinnati in their first game of the regional, which is a double-elimination format.

Other teams in the regional are No. 1 seed Tennessee, the reigning national champion, and No. 4 seed Miami (Ohio).

Wake Forest is 36-20 this season. The ACC record was 16-14, finishing eighth in the 16-team league.

It’s the fourth straight NCAA tournament berth for the Deacons. That’s one year shy of matching the program’s longest stretch ever; Wake Forest went to the NCAA tournament each season from 1998-2002.

Wake Forest has won a regional twice in this century and each time, it was hosting. Those years were 2017 and 2023, the latter of which featured the program’s trip to the College World Series.

In 16 seasons with Tom Walter as coach, Wake Forest has won at least 30 games for the ninth time (one of those, 2020, was only 18 games). Of the program’s 18 NCAA tournament appearances, Walter has been at the helm for six.