The Clemson Tigers will welcome the Florida Gators to town for this weekend’s NCAA Baseball Super Regional at Doug Kingsmore Stadium, marking a rare head-to-head meeting between the two schools in any of the “big three” college sports (football, men’s basketball and baseball).
How rare? Not counting Clemson basketball’s 71-69 neutral-site victory over Florida on December 16, 2017, you haven’t seen the two teams play in a while.
A long, long while.
You’d have to go all the way back to 1983 to find the last time the Tigers and Gators met on a baseball diamond. Clemson met Florida annually from 1979-83, always in Gainesville and in the first month of the season.
On the footfall field? It dates back even further to 1961, a 21-17 Florida victory in Gainesville.
The Tigers and Gators have met on the gridiron 13 times, with all but two of those games taking place in Gainesville or at neutral sites like a regular-season meeting in Jacksonville in 1928 — the year Gator Bowl Stadium first opened. Florida leads the all-time series, 9-3-1. The two schools have played a football game in Clemson only twice, in 1925 and 1911.
In basketball, the Tigers hold a slight 10-9 advantage in head-to-head play. Before Brad Brownell’s 2017 team defeated the Gators in the Orange Bowl Classic in Sunrise, Florida, the two schools hadn’t met on the hardwood since 1957 (in Jacksonville).
Florida hasn’t visited Clemson in football, men’s basketball or baseball since 1934. That year, Clemson basketball defeated the Gators 31-26, about 50 years before the shot clock was introduced in college hoops.
The Clemson Insider’s Will Vandervort wrote about the rarity of Clemson vs. Florida this week and highlighted this about the two schools’ baseball programs.
“The Tigers have played Florida just twice in Clemson all-time. Both of those meetings came all the way back in 1930 when the two split a two-game series.
Though the Tigers and Gators have not played very much on the diamond or in the previous 40 years, the two have met before with a trip to the College World Series on the line.
In 1958, Bill Wilhelm’s first year as Clemson’s head coach, the Tigers met the Gators in what was then called the NCAA District III Tournament in Gastonia, N.C. Florida knocked off the Tigers in the first game, 8-6, but Clemson came all the way back through the losers’ bracket to get a second chance at Florida in the District Finals.”
Game 1 of the best-of-three Super Regional between Clemson and Florida is scheduled for 2 p.m. EDT Saturday. Sunday’s game is scheduled for 2:30 p.m. Both games will be televised by ESPN.
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