Kentucky Baseball opened the Morgantown Regional with a 6-5 win over No. 2-seeded Wake Forest on Friday, turning a tight NCAA Tournament game into a walk-off escape. Jayce Tharnish scored the winning run after reaching on a single in the ninth, stealing second and then third before crossing on a wild pitch.
That finish sent Kentucky into Saturday’s next round and gave the Wildcats the first game they needed in regional play. It also came against a Wake Forest team built around a vaunted pitching staff, the kind of opponent that had helped fuel the criticism Kentucky had been hearing all week.
The game changed in the middle innings after Kentucky fell behind 3-0. Caeden Cloud drove in a run with a double in the fifth, then Braxton Van Cleave followed with a two-run single in the sixth to pull Kentucky even and keep the pressure on Wake Forest. The Wildcats did not stop there, and the comeback carried into the final inning with the score still hanging in the balance.
Defense mattered just as much as the late swing of momentum. Carson Hansen made a sliding snag of a line drive to left field in the ninth, and Jackson Soucie worked a perfect inning to shut the door before the winning sequence began. By the end, Kentucky had taken the game apart one piece at a time and improved to 32-21.
Tharnish gave the night its final jolt two innings before the winner, when he ran down a ball in the field and slammed into the wall making a catch, then came back to decide the game at the plate. Kentucky now waits for the outcome of West Virginia and Binghamton and will play the winner at 5 p.m. ET on Saturday, with a chance to keep the regional run moving against a fresh opponent.
