Inside Wake Forest baseball and the pitching staff behind its dominance in 2023 - ESPN

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.

He told his guys to start a group chat and find new ways to get better, to challenge themselves every day.

That was an easy sell. The trio already had a group chat going, and competition, well, that comes naturally.

«They have that gene,» Walter said. «They want to win, and they have a little mean streak in them — 'Me against you, and I'm winning.'»

At the time, Wake had one true ace in junior Rhett Lowder, who'd just won the school's first ACC pitcher of the year award in 2022. The rest of the rotation was more of a work in progress. Teddy McGraw had finished 2022 strong, but won just five games. Josh Hartle was a big-time prospect coming out of high school, but his freshman season was rocky.

Still, Walter saw the potential, and he wanted his guys singularly focused on reaching it.

In the year since, Walter's prophecy hasn't exactly played out as expected, but in some ways, Wake's run