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Since the start of the college baseball season, the Wake Forest Demon Deacons have been one of the feel-good stories of the year. Already with 32-wins in their back pocket, Wake is looking to reach highs that the program has never reached to this point. They are the number two ranked team in three of the polls that college baseball used to rank teams. Their conference mark of 14-3 is the best record for the team through 17 games in the league since 2002. Last weekend was another first for the program as they went to Louisville and took a series from the Cardinals for the first time ever. This weekend, the Demon Deacons are back on the road at Pittsburgh to meet a struggling Panthers team that is under .500 in both overall and league records. Here is some other news from the league.
After taking two of three from the Boston College Eagles last weekend on the road, the Duke Blue Devils (24-12, 9-8) kept up their good play with a mid-week win over William & Mary. The 7-0 shutout win on Tuesday night was their sixth shutout of the season. The total number of shutouts ties them for 3rd in the nation. It’s the fourth most in program history and is tied for the most under coach Chris Pollard. Duke is one of four teams in the Top-12 in shutouts. Virginia and Wake Forest are tied for eighth with five shutouts apiece. NC State is 12th with four.
There is one more thing that Wake Forest and Virginia share and that is the number of wins they have. Both teams have 32 wins which tie them for the nation’s lead. Virginia got to the 32-win mark on Tuesday night when they defeated VCU for the first time since 2019. The road win was sparked by Ethan Anderson who went 5-for-6 at the plate with three doubles that matched a school record. He also hit a home run from both sides of the plate. He finished his night with 14 total bases, which was the most by a Cavalier player in 24 years. Virginia leads the country with 107 doubles in 38 games. They are the only team in the nation with 100+ doubles. The sophomore catcher is hitting .404, which is the 38th-best average in the country, and fourth-best in the conference.
Georgia Tech’s Kristian Campbell extended his hitting streak to 21 games Tuesday night in the Yellow Jackets’ win over Georgia State. The streak is the longest in the league this year, and ties for the fourth longest in school history (J.J. Thomas in 1996). He is seventh in the league with three sac flies. This weekend, Campbell will try to keep the streak alive vs the Miami Hurricanes (22-14, 10-8), who come into that series with a 5.20 ERA. They have allowed 331 hits in 325.2 IP. Teams are hitting .259 against them.
The North Carolina Tar Heels (25-12, 9-7) are a game back of Virginia for first place in the Coastal Division. This weekend, they host Boston College in a big series for both teams. The Tar Heels rank 10th in team batting at .285. They are being led by junior Hunter Stokely who is hitting .347 in 33 games. He is slugging .633% with an on-base percentage of .462. The pitching is led by Connor Bovair who is 4-1 in nine games with a 4.17 ERA, giving up 47 hits in 47.1 IP, 22 earned runs allowed, and a good walk-to-strikeout ratio of 42 K’s to 15 BB. He has allowed six home runs.
The ACC Player of the Week is LuJames Groover III of NC State. The junior first baseman hit .600 (9-for-15) with three home runs, three RBI, and eight runs scored. He slugged 1.267, with a .714 on-base percentage. Groover was a key contributor to a 4-0 week for the Wolfpack which included a sweep of Florida State last weekend. It was the first-ever sweep of the Seminoles. Groover had three multi-hit games on the week, two of them were three-hit performances vs UNC Wilmington and FSU. He was also named the Perfect Game National Player of the Week. Two of Groover’s three HRs came last Saturday in the Wolfpack’s comeback win over Florida State. He broke a 3-3 tie in the bottom of the eighth with a home run. Then, he scored the game-winning run in the bottom of the 10th on Sunday.
Junior right-hander Rhett Lowder of Wake Forest is this week’s ACC Pitcher of the Week. He went seven scoreless innings on Saturday afternoon vs #8 Louisville. He struck out nine and gave up five hits in improving his record to 7-0. His zero walks were the second time this season he had done that. He had perfect frames in the second, fourth, and sixth. He allowed more than one base runner in only one inning. His ERA of 1.61 is fourth best in the country He is one of nine pitchers from the ACC that has been named to the 61-member College Baseball Foundations Pitcher of the Year Watch List.
We will be back next week with more from the ACC.
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