Clemson Baseball: Hitting Their Stride

With the ACC tournament starting this week, is Clemson baseball hitting its stride at the right time?

It’s tourney time again and the boys of summer are eager to take the diamond in Durham, NC to see who will get to hoist the coveted ACC Championship.

Get out your calculators, brush up on your algebra equations and let’s get started on this ’round robin’ tourney once again. It is of my humble and meaningless opinion that we should scrap the round robin style of tournament play in the ACC.

Just in case you didn’t pick up on the sarcasm in the previous sentences. Why play meaningless games, whose outcomes have zero impact on anything. What is wrong with a simple double elimination tournament?

Lose two, go home.

There are scenarios where one loss teams will play with no chance of making the ACC Championship game. Unfortunately, NASA scientists were not available to break down those exact instances so, speculation must suffice for now.

The ACC Tournament will begin on Tuesday with the play in games. The Tigers avoided the play in-game scenario with a weekend sweep over the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame.

Coach Monte Lee led the Tigers to 2-1, 11-1, and 6-2 victories in South Bend. Clemson baseball now 38-18 on the season and are the 6th seed in the ACC Tournament.

Hitting somewhat of a hot streak as of late, the Tigers are winners of five in a row, 12 out of their last 16 games, and are 8-2 in their last ten games. Saturday, Coach Monte Lee expressed his pleasure in getting an extra day of rest.

"“I’m very proud of our guys,” said head coach Monte Lee after Saturday’s win. “We fought and found a way to sweep this Notre Dame series and put ourselves in a good position going into the ACC Tournament and get us in the conversation for maybe playing at home in a regional. But we still have to take care of business. We have to go into the ACC Tournament and play well, and that’s all we can worry about right now. But I’m very proud that we’re not in a play-in game situation. That will give our guys an extra day of rest, and we’ll see what happens.”"

Up first for Clemson baseball will be a Virginia Cavaliers team that the Tigers have not faced this year. Clemson will face No. 3 seed Virginia on Thursday at 11 a.m., No. 2 seed Louisville on Friday at 11 a.m., and the winner of the Duke vs. Wake Forest play-in game on Saturday at 11 a.m.

All three games will be televised live by Regional Sports Network and available on ESPN3 (subject to blackout). The Tigers do not play on Wednesday.

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The winner of Clemson’s bracket plays in the ACC Championship game on Sunday at noon on ESPN2. The other bracket consists of No. 1 seed Miami (Fla.), No. 4 seed Florida State, No. 5 seed NC State and the winner of the Boston College vs. Georgia Tech play-in game.

The Tigers are ranked anywhere from 15th to 12th, depending on which poll you refer to this week. Hosting a regional is not out of the question either.

Clemson baseball will have to make some noise in the tournament to secure a regional. And by make some noise, I mean they probably have to at least play in the championship game on Sunday.

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Two more wins will give the Tigers that coveted 40th win. That number seems to be the cutoff for hosts vs. non-hosts historically speaking. However it falls into place, whomever they play, the Tigers seem to hitting their stride at the right time.

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