WVU stays alive with win over Wake Forest
Benjamin Powell/The Dominion Post
West Virginia kept its hopes alive of advancing out of the Morgantown Regional of the NCAA baseball playoffs by defeating Wake Forest, 10-5, on Sunday afternoon.
The Mountaineers were scheduled to face Kentucky, which defeated them 11-9 on Saturday, in a must-win game later on Sunday.
WVU needed a victory in their second matchup with the Wildcats to set up a winner-take-all meeting on Monday.
The Mountaineers defeated Binghamton, 10-1, in front of a sell-out crowd in the regional opener on Friday as Ben Lumsden hit a three-run homer, scored twice and reached base four times for WVU.
In the win over the Demon Deacons, Sean Smith had three hits, including a run-scoring single in the fifth inning to put West Virginia ahead to stay, and an RBI double to cape a six-run sixth that put the hosts ahead 10-3.
Gavin Kelly had a double, single and RBI and Matt Ineich also had two hits and an RBI for the Mountaineers, which also got a run-scoring double from Lumsden.
Winning pitcher Dawson Montesa allowed four runs on four hits and four walks with seven strikeouts in 7.1 innings.
In Saturday’s loss to Kentucky, WVU fought back to tie the game twice from deficits of 6-0 after two innings and 8-6 after five innings, but the Wildcats got an RBI single by Luke Lawrence and a two-run single by Hudson Brown in the eighth inning to go back up by three.
WVU pushed across an unearned run and had the tying run at the plate in the top of the ninth but Zahir Barjam flied out to end it.