Wake Forest wails on Clemson in Charlotte
New month, new offensive vibe for Wake Forest’s baseball team.
The Deacons pounded out a 15-4 win against Clemson in a non-conference game on Wednesday night at Truist Field in Charlotte. The game ended in the seventh inning because of the 10-run rule.
This came roughly 24 hours after Wake Forest lost a 1-0 game at High Point. That was the Deacons’ third shutout loss in the month of March.
Turning the page to April, all nine players in Wake’s lineup had at least one hit. Five of them recorded two-hit games. Seven of nine players had at least one RBI — the category leader was Javar Williams, who teed off on a grand slam in the bottom of the sixth. Those were the last four of Wake’s runs.
It was also Wake’s only homer of the game. But the Deacons (21-9) had three triples — by Kade Lewis, Matt Conte and Blake Schaaf — and had at least one hit in every inning.
The Deacons put up three runs in the first. Luke Costello and Boston Torres drove in runs with singles, while Lewis picked up an RBI with a groundout.
Clemson (19-11) got a run back in the third and the Deacons answered with four in the bottom half of the inning. The RBI came from Conte, Andrew Costello, Schaaf and JD Stein. Conte added an RBI triple in the fourth to put the Deacons up 8-1.
The Tigers narrowed the gap to 8-4 with three runs in the top of the fifth.
Wake Forest scored the last seven runs of the game, all in the sixth. Before Williams’ big blast, Conte walked with the bases loaded, Torres had a sacrifice fly and Schaaf singled in a run.
Rhys Bowie started and allowed one run in 2 1/3 innings. He only gave up one hit but walked four, with three strikeouts.
Marcelo Harsch (1-0) pitched the next 2 2/3. He gave up three runs on five hits, along with four strikeouts and no walks. Zach Johnston pitched 1 1/3 scoreless innings and Grant Nicholson finished the game by notching the last two outs.
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