Editor's note: This story was originally published on June 9, prior to the start of the Men's College World Series. It has been updated with dates ahead of Wake Forest's game with Stanford.
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. — Wake Forest coach Tom Walter was chatting with three of his starting pitchers last summer when he offered a history lesson.
Back in 2003, Rice won the College World Series largely on the strength of three dominant starting pitchers — Jeff Niemann, Philip Humber and Wade Townsend — who, a year later, would all go on to be selected within the first eight picks of the 2004 Major League Baseball draft.
Walter's pitchers were still in diapers back then, but a rotation that good gets remembered. It's legendary. This staff, Walter said, could be legendary, too. «I want you to think of this rotation in that same regard,» Walter told them.