It was just two weekends ago that Clemson baseball coach Monte Lee voiced cautious optimism about the direction his team was headed.
No, the Tigers didn’t get much length from their starters not named Mack Anglin against Florida State. As has been the case most of the season, Clemson pieced it together on the mound long enough for the offense to score enough runs for the Tigers to win the final two games against the then-No. 9-ranked Seminoles.
With the series clinched, Clemson had won seven of its last nine games. And that was before the Tigers bludgeoned Presbyterian and a top-25 Wofford team for two more midweek victories, outscoring them 29-7.
“We’re trying to do everything we can to put ourselves in position to play baseball as long as we can,” Lee said then.
How much longer that will be, though, is a pressing question for the Tigers, particularly after this past weekend. Clemson took on another ranked team in Louisville. This time, the Tigers left Kentucky without a single win, the latest bump on what’s been a rollercoaster ride of a season.
Not even 15 runs and a 4-for-5, five-RBI day from a sizzling Max Wagner could keep Clemson from getting swept Sunday when the Cardinals teed off on six Tigers pitchers for 16 hits and 18 runs. It’s becoming increasingly likely that, unless the offense simply carries Clemson to Charlotte over the next few weeks, the Tigers will miss out on the ACC Tournament later this month.
And if that happens, watching the NCAA Tournament from home for the second straight year would be a virtual guarantee for the Tigers.
Clemson now sits at 6-15 in league play, which equates to just a .300 winning percentage. The only team in the conference that’s been worse than that to this point is Boston College at 4-20. In order to qualify for the 12-team conference tournament, the Tigers need to finish the regular season with a higher league winning percentage than Duke (.381) or North Carolina (.381), the closest teams to Clemson in the chase for the final spot in the tournament. Each team has three weekend series left totaling nine conference games, though Clemson will play one less ACC game than everybody else after having its series finale at Pittsburgh canceled earlier in the season.
Yet, on paper, Clemson’s body of work makes for a resume that stacks up with teams vying for an at-large regional berth.
At 28-17 overall, the Tigers are still 11 games over .500 on the season with one-third of their wins coming against teams ranked in the top 30 of the RPI, including a pair of victories over Georgia (No. 4) and Florida State (11). Even with the sweep at Louisville, Clemson moved up one spot to No. 29 in the NCAA’s latest RPI rankings – one spot behind a Wake Forest team it took a series from on the road last month and a spot ahead of TCU, which entered the week just a game behind Oklahoma State atop the Big 12 standings.
But unless Clemson is nearly perfect the rest of the way – a monumental ask for a team with a 6.15 earned run average against ACC foes that still has series against No. 23 Georgia Tech (starting Friday), No. 12 Virginia (May 13-15) and Boston College (May 19-21) left – the NCAA Tournament will be too far of a reach. Simply getting to .500 in league play, usually the floor for teams hoping to sneak into a regional, would require Clemson to sweep all of those series, and more than one conference loss the rest of the way would all but seal the Tigers’ fate.
Since 2018 (the 2020 season was canceled in response to the coronavirus pandemic), no ACC team that finished two games below .500 or worse in conference play has made the NCAA Tournament. Only one has been selected during that period – Duke, with a 16-17 league record last year – that finished a game below .500. Clemson’s most recent NCAA appearance came in 2019 when the Tigers were the No. 3 seed in the Oxford Regional after finishing 15-15 in conference play.
Lee’s words aren’t any less true than they were this time a week ago. If there’s a team that ever needed to take things one pitch, one at-bat and one game at a time, it’s this one. At this point, the Tigers’ best bet is to find a way to get to Charlotte later this month and see what happens (conference tournament winners automatically qualify for a regional).
Because the more it plays, the more this Clemson team shows it’s capable of just about anything over nine innings.
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