It could have been the swing, the sound, or maybe even how the baseball continued to climb up and over the wall, because the Virginia Tech dugout was celebrating well before Jack Hurley’s sixth home run of the season smashed into the batter’s eye in center field.
Once the ball landed, the scoreboard ticked three runs in the Hokies’ favor on Saturday afternoon, and a mob of players jumped and swarmed Hurley as he slammed the home run hammer into the artificial warning track in front of the dugout. They smacked his helmet, his hands and his back, eventually letting go of him as a smile beamed across his face.
For a team that’s had a lot more down than ups in the past week, Hurley’s homer picked the team up in a place where it needed it the most.
And it delivered Virginia Tech (11-6, 1-4 ACC) a 22-6 win over Pitt (10-9, 1-4 ACC), right when the season-opening seven-game win streak was beginning to sink too far into the rearview.
Once 7-0 on March 1, the Hokies have fallen back to Earth, winning just four times in their past nine games. Entering Saturday, they had lost five-straight.
“It was long overdue,” Tech head coach John Szefc said about the team’s first ACC win after the game. “But it’s certainly nice to get one.”
Superhuman efforts of Jack Hurley, who finished out the day with a .485 batting average, delivered Tech its first win since March 8. His two hits extended his hit streak to 16-straight games to open the season, meaning he’s over halfway to catching Tim Buheller’s program record 32-game hit streak set back in 1985.
The Hokies hit a season-high six home runs and scored the most runs in an ACC game in program history against Pitt.
Hurley’s homer kick-started a four-run third inning, one in which Tech jumped out in front by six runs after Drue Hackenberg settled in after surrendering a lead-off double and a first inning run. And from there he went to work.
He shut down the Panthers for the next three innings before yielding a solo home run and a two-run shot in the fifth and sixth inning, respectively. Once Jack Anderson’s home run left the park in the sixth, it brought Pitt to within three runs, but Hackenberg labored through it.
Even though Hackenberg didn’t have his best stuff on Saturday, he battled through on 89 pitches — 64 of which were for strikes — in six innings, where he struck out four and allowed four runs on 11 hits and no walks. He picked up his first ACC win in the process after Tech wasn’t able to capitalize on his Sunday start at then-No. 13 Georgia Tech last weekend.
“It’s just about attacking the zone,” Hackenberg said. “That’s just my mindset.”
In another start, Hackenberg once again left it up to the bullpen to record the final nine outs. And in a close game, that hasn’t been a sure thing this season after the bullpen coughed up leads in two of Tech’s three games last weekend.
When he left after the top of the sixth inning, the score was 7-4 in Tech’s favor. But the offense had other ideas.
The Hokies exploded for nine runs — eight of which came before the Panthers could record an out — in the bottom of the sixth, pushing the lead to 12.
“The run support is great,” Hackenberg said. “It gives me a ton of confidence.”
It began with a Nick Holesa double, which was followed by a Carson DeMartini RBI single through the middle of the diamond. DeMartini came around to score three pitches later on Nick Biddison’s third home run of the season.
Gavin Cross was walked and then advanced to second on a Tanner Schobel single, then third once Hurley walked. And then Eduardo Malinowski, who leads the team in RBIs with 23, drove in Cross and Schobel on a ground-rule double that bounced over the left field wall. Cade Hunter then launched a three-run homer to right field and finally, DeMartini capped the inning off with his second home run of the afternoon to left field.
After all of that, an inning the Hokies entered leading by just three runs, they now held a 16-4 advantage.
It set the stage for Ryan Metz to work out of a bases-loaded jam in the seventh to hold the lead at 11 and then Hurley added another run to the scoreboard after hitting his home run second of the day off the batter’s eye — the seventh of his season.
Then again Hurley got another chance in the eighth, driving two more home on a ground-rule double. Tyler Dean finished the afternoon off on the mound in the ninth.
“Felt great,” Hurley said after the win. “It definitely got the monkey off our back.”
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