Wake Forests baseball team heading to West Virginia for NCAA regional play
The wait was a little longer than expected thanks to the drawn-out ESPN coverage of the NCAA baseball regional pairings on Monday, but it was worth it for Wake Forest.
The Demon Deacons are headed to the Morgantown Regional at Monongalia County Ballpark in Granville, West Virginia as the second seed in the four-team pod. They will take on Kentucky on Friday at noon on ESPN2 as their road to the College World Series will begin.
Coach Tom Walter's team is in the NCAA regionals for the fifth straight season after going 38-19 overall and 16-14 in the ACC, good enough to finish in sixth place.
"I'm really proud of our club and the sacrifices they've made, and how they've come together as a team over this year," said Walter, who earlier this season won his 950th career game. "We've faced some adversity between injuries and spurts where we haven't played our best baseball, gotten swept a couple times along the way by really good teams, and our guys kept battling and pulled it together at the end, and we're playing our best baseball when it matters the most."
The Demon Deacons won 10 in a row before losing their final regular-season game to Duke, then were upset by Pitt in the ACC Tournament in Charlotte on May 20. The early exit gives them a nine-day rest between games.
"Kade Lewis was a little banged up, and I think this time off has helped," Walter said shortly after the announcement. "If we'd made a deep run in the ACC tournament, you know, guys like Will Ray and Kade Lewis probably wouldn't have the time to be 100% heading into this regional."
The team gathered at the Crawford Family Meeting Room at Couch Ballpark, but players were not made available for interviews after the announcement. At one point, one player asked: "We are in, right?"
Wake Forest, NC State, North Carolina and East Carolina are the four North Carolina schools in the 64-team field.
"While we certainly wanted to play through Sunday at the ACC tournament, there were some benefits to our early exit, and being a little healthier is one of them," Walter said.
West Virginia is the top seed and will play on its homefield after compiling a 39-14 record. It will take on Binghamton (31-20) in the 5 p.m. game on Friday.
Another benefit of the long layoff between games is Walter and pitching coach Eric Niesen have it set where the team's No. 1, Chris Levonas; No. 2, Troy Dressler and No. 3, Cameron Bagwell, will start the first three games of the regional, which will run from Friday to Monday.
Levonas went 10-3 with a 2.90 ERA, Dressler is 8-1 with 75 strikeouts in 53 innings and Bagwell started 12 games and went 2-1.
"If we have to go beyond that, we feel like we've got lots of bullets," Walter said, referring to his pitching staff. "We've got Duncan Marston, we've got Rhys Bowie, Evan Jones and Marcelo Harsch."
Blake Morningstar, who was last year's ace, has been injured most of the season but Walter said he is available to pitch.
"(Morningstar) has been throwing better and better, kind of each week here, and I think he's a guy that's going to go out there and get some big outs for us," Walter said.
The Wildcats were 15-9 against the teams in the field, and according to ESPN, were one of the last four teams into the tournament.
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This story was originally published May 26, 2026 at 4:03 AM.