Wake Forest's NCAA tournament path announced
WINSTON-SALEM – Wake Forest’s baseball team is headed to West Virginia.
The Deacons are the 2-seed in the Morgantown regional. The NCAA tournament bracket was announced Monday on ESPN.
Other teams with Wake Forest and host West Virginia are 3-seed Kentucky and 4-seed Binghamton. The Deacons’ first game will be against Kentucky at noon on Friday. It’s a double elimination format and Wake Forest will play at least two of the three teams this weekend, if not all three.
The winner of this regional will face the winner of the Los Angeles regional, hosted by No. 1 overall seed UCLA, in a best-of-3 super regional series. The winner of that heads to the College World Series.
Wake Forest heads into the NCAA tournament having played some of its best baseball of the season recently. After a three-game sweep at Georgia Tech, Wake Forest reeled off 10 straight wins — its second double-digit winning streak of the season, after winning 15 early in the season.
But the Deacons also enter the NCAA tournament having lost their last two. They dropped the regular-season finale at Duke, and then bowed out of the ACC tournament in a 7-4 loss to Pittsburgh late Wednesday night.
It’s the fifth straight NCAA tournament berth for the Deacons, matching a program record. They also went to five straight tournaments from 1998-2002.
Wake’s record in regionals over the previous four seasons is a combined 8-6, which includes a perfect 3-0 sweep through the only time the Deacons hosted (in 2023, en route to Omaha). In each of the three road regionals, Wake Forest lost the opening game. Last year, the Deacons rallied back to force a decisive seventh game of the regional at Tennessee before falling to the Volunteers.
This is Wake’s 19th NCAA tournament berth. Seven of those have come under coach Tom Walter, who’s in his 17th season at the helm.
