Seth Keener opened Wake Forest’s run in the NCAA baseball tournament with a masterpiece performance.
Keener struck out 13 George Mason batters, the most by a Demon Deacon pitcher this season, gave up just three hits, and combined with a pair of two-run homers as well as a grand slam, the result was a 12-0 victory at a sold-out David F. Couch Ballpark on Friday night.
With the victory, Wake Forest (48-10) will face Maryland on Saturday at 7 p.m. in the nightcap of the second day of the Winston-Salem Regional. It was the Terrapins who took the Deacs out of the NCAA tournament last season. George Mason plays Northeastern in a loser’s bracket game at 1 p.m.
“Seth Keener was clearly the story tonight, and you can’t go a whole lot better than that,” Wake Forest Coach Tom Walter said. “Made big pitch after big pitch, had probably eight or nine 3-2 counts that he won over the course of the game. Really proud of Seth.”
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Keener struck out the side in the first two innings, and when he got two more in the third inning, he had already matched his career high of eight. He struck out eight against Youngstown State on Feb. 17. The Patriots (34-26) didn’t get a fly-ball out until the fifth inning, and Keener struck out the side three times.
Pierce Bennett singled to start the second, and after Bennett Lee struck out, left-handed designated hitter Adam Cecere went to the opposite field for a two-run homer to start the scoring for Wake Forest. Cecere missed a month of a season due to injury, then sat out some games as Danny Corona took over as DH.
The Demon Deacons doubled the score in the third inning when Justin Johnson homered to the right of the scoreboard in right-center field, driving in Nick Kurtz, who’d walked two batters earlier. Both homers came off George Mason starter Ben Shields.
George Mason’s Jordan Smith singled to start the seventh, stole second and moved to third on an Mark Trotta ground ball. Before the first pitch to Brett Stallings, Wake Forest Coach Tom Walter had a meeting at the mound. Sensing that Keener was about to leave the game, a portion of the crowd rose to give Keener a standing ovation. But when Walter left the mound and Keener stayed on the field, the crowd erupted.
“Well, I knew he was going to come out there, and I figured he’d give me like an option,” Keener said. “And I figured if I going to stay out there, I’d have to convince him to keep me out there. So, I was like, ‘No shot I’m coming out of this game.”
Keener got Stallings on a tapper back to the mound. He left the field pounding a fist into his glove as his teammates emerged from the dugout to greet him.
As a reward for Keener’s resolve, Wake Forest doubled the score again, adding four runs in the seventh. Tommy Hawke tripled to the wall in left-center and Kurtz drove him home with a double, chasing Shields for reliever Nolan Lamere. He walked Wilken before surrendering a double to Pierce Bennett and a single to Bennett Lee to cap the rally.
George Mason got only two baserunners to third all night. Pinch-hitter Craig Miles Jr. was the second of the two and he got to third in the eighth on a walk from reliever Cole Roland, who threw wild to first on a pickoff try to get Miles to third. Roland then struck out the next two batters before South Trimble fouled out to Wilken at third.
“Obviously, they’re a team that’s very, very good and they’re going to hit mistakes,” Shields said. “And as the game went on, I think I left too many pitches over the dish for them to hit, and they’re going to make you pay for mistakes.
Two George Mason errors set the stage for Bennett’s grand slam in the eighth, a ball hit so hard that left-fielder Miles didn’t bother to chase it.
Maryland 9, Northeastern 2
Nick Lorusso became the first NCAA Division I player in 20 years to reach 100 RBIs in a season, leading No. 19 Maryland to a 7-2 victory over Northeastern in the opener of the Winston-Salem Regional. The last player to reach that total was New Mexico State’s Billy Becher, who had 118 in 2003.
The Terrapins (42-19) matched the 2015 team, which also won 42 games and advanced to the NCAA Super Regionals. Last season’s Maryland team has the school record for victories in a season with 48.
Lorusso was a double short of hitting for the cycle, going 3-for-4 with two runs scored and two RBIs. His first-inning homer was his 24th of the season to equal Maryland’s single-season home run record set last season by Chris Alleyne. Also, with eight total bases, Lorusso also set the Maryland single-season record for total bases with 191.
ACC in the NCAA
- Virginia 15, Army 1, Charlottesville Regional
- Clemson 12, Lipscomb 5, Clemson Regional
- NC State 5, Campbell 1, Columbia Regional
- Duke 12, UNC Wilmington 3, Conway Regional
- Troy, 11, Boston College 10, Tuscaloosa Regional
- Iowa 5, North Carolina 4, Terre Haute Regional
- Miami 9, Maine 1, Coral Gables Regional