Earning a shutout victory in baseball is every college pitcher’s dream. Looking at the stat sheet after the game and seeing a zero under ‘earned runs’ means everything to a pitcher.
When Wake Forest travels to Doak Field at Dail Park to take on the Wolfpack in a three-game series starting tonight at 6:30, it brings with it the Co-ACC Pitcher of the Week in Tim Cooney. But N.C. State has its own counter punch in right-handed ace Cory Mazzoni.
Both pitchers dazzled their opponents last weekend, but Mazzoni statistically had the edge over Cooney. While Cooney tossed a shutout against No. 6 Florida State on Saturday, allowing only five hits in 7 and two-thirds innings, Mazzoni went the distance in the series opener against No. 15 Clemson and allowed just four hits in his first career shutout.
Coach Elliott Avent said he knows about the pitching Wake brings to Raleigh, but believes his team has enough arms to compete with the Deacons.
“They have a kid [Cooney] who can pitch his butt off,” Avent said. “They went down to Tallahassee and shutout Florida State 8-0, which doesn’t happen very often. But we know that we have great pitching too. So we better be ready to play and be ready to go up every at-bat wanting to hit.”
The Clemson series did much more for the Pack than just getting a series win against an ACC opponent. It also instilled confidence in a team that had scored only 14 runs over a two-weekend span, where the Pack combined to go 1-5 over that span.
In three games against the Tigers, the Wolfpack matched its run total of 14 and continued to break out against the Spartans of UNC-Greensboro on Tuesday night in a 9-1 victory.
Junior infielder Andrew Ciencin was a big part of the victory over the Spartans as he hit a three-run home run in the first inning and finished with four RBI. Ciencin said the key to the team’s success this weekend will rely on staying loose.
“When you’re losing, I think everyone just presses and tries to do too much when they’re at bat,” Ciencin said. “But against Clemson, we were probably one of the loosest teams I’ve ever been a part of. We just went out there and took that mentality onto the field and played the game the right way.”
In the game this past Saturday night, freshman D.J. Thomas allowed three early runs before being pulled by Avent for redshirt senior reliever Rob Chamra. Chamra threw five scoreless innings of long relief to get the Pack back on track as the offense scored five runs to earn Chamra the win.
Chamra said that the team has gained much more confidence after its recent series win and the key to this weekend will be continuing that success.
“Winning always gives the team a huge boost of confidence,” Chamra said. “A lot of the guys are swinging the bat well and pitching well. So we just need to continue to play together and keep playing consistently well.”
Chamra said the offensive surge the team has been on lately is more due to timely hitting rather than just hitting well.
“The offense went through a little bit of a lull, but we seem to have it figured out again,” Chamra said. “We’re getting much better at timely hitting and moving runners over and looking like we are in mid-season form. Hopefully we can continue that against Wake Forest and get another conference series win.”
While the team may have done well against the Tigers last weekend, the Pack knows the road does not get any better in the ACC. But with the series taking place in Raleigh, Avent knows there is no place like home.
“We’re about to play a really good baseball team,” Avent said. “But Clemson came in 15th in the country and we won two out of three and we know very well we could have won the third game. In this conference, you can’t take anything for granted. We are playing really well and just need to keep it up against another really good team in Wake Forest.”
Game times are set for 6:30 p.m. on Friday and Saturday night and 1:00 p.m. on Sunday at Doak Field at Dail Park.
