Wake Forest has the best pitching staff in college baseball and a deep, powerful batting order that has blasted 120 home runs and a plus-6.0 run differential that is the best in the nation.

Both of those elements contributed to the Deacons taking a 1-0 lead in their best-of-3 NCAA Super Regional series against Alabama on Saturday.

But there was also 1 more important piece to the winning puzzle.

Home field advantages and the lift provided by the proverbial 10th man (at least in the case of baseball) can be overdone at times.

Not in this case.

Wake’s impressive pursuit of the College World Series, which inched another step closer to Omaha with a 5-4 win against the Crimson Tide, has been fueled by a 3,900-watt jolt of energy provided by a campus and community that has joyfully embraced coach Tom Walter’s top-ranked team.

That 3,900 number is the capacity of David F. Couch Ballpark, which has been packed to the gills for every home game since the final weekend series of the regular season.

That includes most of the sellout crowd that returned to the stadium after a 5-hour rain delay and stayed until the bitter end at well after 1 a.m. last week while providing a raucous, party-like atmosphere that helped propel Wake to a 21-6 regional victory against Maryland.

As inspirational as they were last week, they were needed even more on Saturday. And they didn’t let their Deacons down, helping to pull them through a game in which Alabama never let them take a deep breath or feel comfortable.

It took a Danny Corona homer in the 5th, a 2-out RBI single by Adam Cecere an inning later and some clutch pitching by ace Rhett Lowder and reliever Sean Sullivan to secure Wake’s school-record 51st win in 61 games this season.

Whether or not the support coming from the stands had anything to do with helping to pull the Deacons through and take control of the series is debatable.

But it certainly didn’t hurt.

“Deacon Nation has showed out the past couple of weekends,” junior 3rd baseman Brock Wilken said even before Saturday’s game. “They’ve been there through everything. The atmosphere is electric. We feed off that so much in the dugout.”

Lifting its own team to greater heights isn’t the only way a large, loud, supportive home crowd can have an effect on a game.

It can also help rattle the opposition and maybe even influence a call or two.

While there’s no way to prove that either happened on Saturday, there were several instances that can be interpreted that way.

With 2 out and nobody on in the bottom of the 5th, Wake’s Danny Corona checked his swing on an 0-2 pitch by Alabama starter Luke Holman. Had it been ruled a swing, the inning would have been over. 

But with the sellout crowd lobbying loudly, 1st base umpire Mark Buchanan said no, extending the at bat. The din only got louder as Corona hit the next pitch into the trees over the rightfield wall for the go-ahead homer.

An inning later, Crimson Tide 2nd baseman Ed Johnson dropped a routine fly ball for an error that might have been caused by an inability of the 3 players chasing the ball behind 1st base to hear one another.

The miscue allowed Wilken to end up on 2nd base. He eventually scored what proved to be the winning run on Cecere’s timely hit.

Then there was the game’s final out.

With the majority of the 3,903 on their feet and screaming at full volume in anticipation of a Deacons victory, Johnson was rung up on a high outside pitch that appeared well out of the strike zone.

This is not to suggest anything sinister about home plate umpire Dave Condon. It’s just to say that it’s only human nature to get caught up in the emotion of such a moment.

Even if the fans in the stands had zero impact on the events between the white lines and were simply a soundtrack that added to an already exciting college baseball game, their presence and passion are incredibly significant for Wake Forest.

With an undergraduate enrollment of just under 5,000 students and an alumni base to match, Wake has the natural disadvantage of being the smallest school among the Power 5 conferences.

It has traditionally had a hard time filling seats at its football stadium and basketball arena, and has drawn criticism – usually by innuendo – that it doesn’t deserve the same cut of the ACC’s revenue as some of its bigger, more marketable rivals.

There are even some whispers that the conference would be better off – translated to more profitable – without the Deacons.

Those critics conveniently overlook the fact that Dave Clawson’s football team has been to 7 straight bowls, the basketball program has taken a noticeable upswing since the arrival of Steve Forbes and the golf and tennis teams are both perennial national powers.

Now the baseball team has begun making noise, too.

It’s a din created by the ping of big bats making solid contact, the pop of 90-plus MPH pitches hitting a catcher’s mitt and the cheers of a stadium full of energized fans. It’s a sound that with 1 more win, will be heard well beyond Winston-Salem.

All the way to Omaha.