ASU sweeps Deacons
Mountaineers pound

Wake Forest 22-6
From staff reports

On the strength of a school-record 27 hits, Appalachian State completed a season sweep of Wake Forest with a resounding 22-6 victory in the Mountaineers’ home opener Tuesday at Smith Stadium.

Thirteen different players banged out hits for Appalachian State (11-8), which completed its first season sweep of Wake Forest since 1996. When Appalachian beat Wake 18-8 on Feb. 27 in Winston-Salem, the 18 runs the Mountaineers scored were the most they’ve ever scored against an Atlantic Coast Conference foe.

However, Appalachian easily surpassed that mark Tuesday en route to outscoring the Demon Deacons by a combined 40-14 in two matchups this season.

Appalachian State shortstop Jason Altenhof led the onslaught and extended his season-long hitting streak to 11 games with a 5-for-6, five-run performance. Jason Rook added a 4-for-4, four-RBI, four-run effort and Wes Hobson and Andrew Franco chipped three hits apiece. Franco, Isaac Harrow, Jason Wallace and Adam Beasley all homered for the Mountaineers, who had hit just 11 home runs as a team through 18 games coming in.

Despite the record-breaking offensive performance, the key to the game was the pitching performance turned in by Appalachian’s bullpen trio of Nick Terry, Adam Mills and Garrett Sherrill.

Appalachian State was clinging to a 6-5 lead in the fourth inning when Terry entered the game in relief of starter Aubrey Edens. The southpaw put an end to the seesaw battle by limiting Wake to just one run on three hits over 3 2/3 innings of work and earned the win to move to 2-0 on the campaign.

Mills tossed 1 1/3 innings of hitless relief to up his string of consecutive scoreless innings to 16 1/3 and Sherrill registered a scoreless ninth to close out the Mountaineers’ third win in their last four meetings with the Deacons.

After losing 44 of their previous 45 matchups versus ACC competition coming into the 2008 season, the Mountaineers have taken 3-of-5 games from the baseball-rich ACC so far this year. They have one remaining game against a member of the ACC during the regular season, April 2 at No. 3 North Carolina.

Appalachian State continues a six-game homestand this weekend when it hosts UNC Greensboro in the first SoCon series of the year for both teams. The three-game set begins on Friday at 5 p.m. at Smith Stadium.