Virginia Tech returned to English Field this weekend for a pivotal ACC home series against Pitt, a team that arrived in Blacksburg in a freefall – having surrendered 72 runs across their previous two conference series. For a Hokies (19-19, 9-12 ACC) team desperately needing to reverse its own conference skid, the Panthers (24-14, 7-11 ACC) represented a major opportunity. Virginia Tech seized that opportunity – taking the series two games to one behind a nine-run fourth inning Friday, a bullpen collapse on Saturday that gave Pitt life and a Hudson Lutterman walk-off home run on Sunday that snapped a three-series ACC losing streak.
Game One: Virginia Tech 11, Pitt 6
Hokies ace Brett Renfrow had spent the better part of two months as a Saturday starter, but he made the transition look easy. Renfrow worked six innings, struck out nine and surrendered just two earned runs in what Szefc described as a command-driven performance — one where Renfrow stayed out of the middle of the plate and let his stuff do the work.
“To be a high-level guy, which he is, he’s gonna have to locate better, and I think he did that tonight,” Szefc said. “He was good with his command, and that’s what got him through six, giving up two runs.”
The offense set the tone before Renfrow even needed to bear down. In the second inning, Sam Grube launched a 448-foot solo shot that served as a statement. Owen Petrich followed with an RBI single to make it 2-0, and Tech never turned back.
“We set the tone,” Grube said. “That was a big thing in the pre-game meeting — to come out and put the foot on the gas right away. Everyone is past their slumps. We’re seeing it well and everyone is coming together.”
Pitt managed to creep within one in the third when Kai Wagner reached and came around to score on a Joey Baran groundout. But any momentum the Panthers hoped to build was immediately suffocated by what happened next.
The fourth inning was a demolition. Five of Tech’s first six hitters reached base, with Hudson Lutterman, Ethan Gibson, Owen Petrich and Sam Gates each singling and Nick Locurto scorching a double down the left-field line to plate two and push the lead to 3-1. Gibson added a fourth run before the lineup turned over and the hits kept coming, loading the bases.
Pitt pulled their starter, Antonio Doganiero, and turned to their usual Friday starter, David Leslie. It didn’t matter. Pete Daniel punched a two-run single through the left side, and Ethan Ball followed with an RBI double to stretch the lead to 8-1. Leslie lost the strike zone entirely, walking three consecutive hitters — including one on 12 pitches — around a wild pitch that scored another run. He briefly found it again, striking out Locurto, but Gibson greeted the next fastball with a two-run single to left to cap the frame at 11-1. Eight hits, three walks and 14 plate appearances — the Hokies had put together one of the most complete innings of their season.
“It’s like scratching an itch that you can’t scratch,” Gibson said. “Everybody’s electric. Everybody’s behind each other trying to keep that energy.”
The irony is that after the fourth, the Hokies went completely quiet — Pitt reliever Daniel McAuliff retired seven straight batters, punching out his first four with a sharp mix of cutters and sliders, and Noah Czajkowski handled the next three. However, empty late innings are far easier to accept when the lead is built that deep.
Renfrow exited after the sixth, having allowed a Caden Dulin solo shot to make it 11-2, finishing with two strikeouts to close his final frame. The bullpen had a shaky ninth — Josh Berzonski allowed a walk and back-to-back hits before the Panthers scored four times, two of which came on bases-loaded walks against Brendan Yagesh. Luke Craytor eventually entered with the bases still loaded, the tying run on deck and a save situation on his hands. He got Pitt catcher Sebastian Pisacreta to lift a fly ball to right, which Grube nearly lost in the sky before hauling it in with a leaping grab.
“There were pockets when they were better than us,” Szefc said. “There were pockets when we were better. We just had the better pocket.”
Game Two: Pitt 5, Virginia Tech 4
Saturday was a gut punch delivered in the most familiar way possible for this Virginia Tech team.
Griffin Stieg was not at his sharpest, navigating traffic all afternoon and allowing nine hits across six innings — but he was clutch when it mattered, stranding runner after runner and keeping Pitt to a single run. The Panthers scored only on a Sebastian Pisacreta sacrifice fly in the second, and Stieg kept them off the board entirely the rest of his outing despite rarely pitching with a clean inning.
Meanwhile, the Hokies built their lead methodically. They knotted the game on a sacrifice fly of their own, then took advantage of a Pitt error in the fifth to push ahead. In the sixth, Hudson Lutterman put his stamp on the afternoon with a 387-foot solo homer to left — his seventh of the year — and Virginia Tech added another run to lead 4-1 heading to the eighth. A series win felt close.
Then the bullpen entered, and the wheels came off. Pitt strung together a Lorenzo Carrier walk and singles from Kai Wagner and Trey Fenderson to load the bases with nobody out. Joey Baran’s RBI groundout made it 4-2, and with two outs, Carter Dierdorf lined a two-run single to right-center to tie the game.
Eddie Smink — Pitt’s best relief arm and the one weapon in their depleted bullpen that consistently delivered — came on and immediately quelled a Tech threat in the bottom half.
Then in the ninth, after Caden Dulin singled and Carrier was hit by a pitch, Anthony LaSala moved both runners into scoring position and two free passes followed, pushing the go-ahead run across to complete a 5-4 comeback.
Game Three: Virginia Tech 6, Pitt 5
Sunday’s rubber match was exactly the kind of game this Hokies season has needed — a back-and-forth fight with the series on the line, settled by a player who refused to let it go the wrong way.
Ethan Grim drew the start and handled the first two innings without issue before the third unraveled on him. A walk and a single opened the door, and Caden Dulin — who had gone deep on Friday as well — drove a 392-foot home run to left-center to give Pitt a 3-1 lead. Grim finished after 3.2 innings having allowed three runs on six hits and a pair of walks.
Willie Hurt was the unsung catalyst of the afternoon. The young Hokie reached base four times — once on a hit and three times via walks — and crossed the plate three times.
“When he gets opportunities, he produces,” Lutterman said of Hurt after the game. “He’s good offensively, defensively, hustles. Just an all-around good teammate.”
Virginia Tech began answering in the fourth when Hurt drew a walk, Gates singled him to third, and Petrich lifted a sacrifice fly to right to bring Hurt home and trim the deficit to 3-2.
Aiden Robertson bridged to Preston Crowl, and once Crowl took the ball, Pitt’s offense went quiet. He allowed just two baserunners across three innings, struck out a pair and showed no signs of fatigue despite pitching for the second time in the series — he had also thrown two innings in the Friday win. It was a quietly outstanding performance.
But the defining moment of the game — and perhaps the defining moment of the Hokies’ season to this point — came in the seventh. Ethan Gibson led off with a double, Hurt drew his third walk, and Owen Petrich stepped in with two on and a 4-2 deficit staring him down. He had seen a fastball on the first pitch and fouled it straight back.
“I fouled back a fastball and knew if I got it again, I could handle it,” Petrich said. He got it again. He sent it 421 feet to dead center for a three-run home run that turned the deficit into a lead and shook English Field awake.
Brendan Yagesh took over for Crowl in the eighth and immediately walked into a two-out, bases-loaded jam — and got out of it. The ninth was less tidy. A leadoff hit-by-pitch and a groundout put Trey Fenderson on second with one out, and Joey Baran laced a two-out double down the right-field line that just barely eluded Lutterman’s outstretched glove at first base, knotting the game at five.
Pitt turned to Andrew Luczak to try to force extras. He fell behind Hudson Lutterman 0-2, looking like he had command of the at-bat. Then he bounced two sliders in the dirt, evening the count.
Lutterman drove a fastball 359 feet into the Hokies’ own bullpen in left field, the dugout erupted, and Virginia Tech had walked off its fourth game of the season.
With the series victory, the Hokies snapped a three-series ACC losing streak and climbed back to .500. The weekend had everything that defines this roster — explosive offense when it clicks, pitching that gives the team a chance, and an unsettling vulnerability in late-inning situations that reared its head on Saturday. But Sunday answered the question that matters most: when the game is on the line, this lineup has the capacity to deliver.
Szefc, ever the pragmatist, framed the bigger picture with characteristic honesty: “As weird as this sounds, at 9-12, we’re a squeeze bunt away at Stanford from being 10-11 and winning our home series with more home series left. As up and down as it’s been, I still think we’re in a pretty good place to finish in a good spot.”
The Hokies will now head to Richmond on Tuesday, April 21, to face VCU at 1 p.m. ET.
