Clemson Baseball: No love from ACC coaches, but Bakich undaunted

With a new coaching staff, a lot of new faces and a ton of unanswered questions, one could understand why Clemson Baseball was picked to finish fifth in the ACC Atlantic Division, which contains 7 total teams.

The Tigers received one lone vote to win the conference, but were slotted behind Louisville, Wake Forest, North Carolina State and Florida State, while ahead of only Notre Dame and Boston College.

In one sense there’s no shame in being behind any of the four teams ahead of the Tigers in any given season.  They’re all college baseball name brands in a pretty tough division year in and year out and even Notre Dame and Boston College have had their years, good teams and tough players.

https://twitter.com/ACCBaseball/status/1621238091821318149

But all four in the same season?  With the talent the Tigers have returning?

Interesting.

Just don’t tell new coach Erik Bakich to set his expectations that low.

Appearing on the Ball Talk podcast Bakich had this to say:

"This team has all the ingredients of being a championship team in conference play and this team has all the ingredients and physical talent, not lacking anything to make a run through the post-season."

Bakich continued on to say that he believes this team is deeper and has more talent than his 2019 Michigan squad that finished runner-up in Omaha.

Bakich acknowledged there will be adversity along the way and that teams are judged on how they finish, as Clemson fans know all to well after last seasons flame out after a 14-0 start.

Some of that adversity may have already hit in that Cooper Ingle and Blake Wright are both recovering from injuries and those things are going to happen during a 56 game college baseball season.

The first step is believing and while only one team will reach the ultimate goal in Omaha, it’s clear that the team in Clemson doesn’t expect to finish fifth in the ACC Atlantic at the end of the season.

Of course, this is baseball and the Tigers could literally finish fifth in the Division AND make a run through the post-season.

Both things can be true.

As Bakich said, teams are judged on how they finish and if the Tigers do make a run, no one will care about a coaches poll in early February.