Clemson Baseball: Tigers complete sweep of Gamecocks to finish week 3-0

Clemson Baseball (9-1) completed a 2 game sweep of the South Carolina Gamecocks with their second consecutive 5-4 win over their rivals on Sunday and finished the week 3-0 to move to 9-1 on the season.

The third game of the series will likely be made up in early April in Columbia.

It was just a little over a week ago that Kennesaw State mashed the listless Tigers by an embarrassing 18-1 score and left the Tigers and their fans with big questions.

Though they didn't play their best baseball, Clemson managed to win the last two games of that series, beat USC Upstate Tuesday and then perform in the clutch on the mound, in the field and at the plate in taking down South Carolina twice.

Andrew Ciufo's 12th-inning blast saved the Tigers from imploding and blowing a 4-1 ninth-inning lead on Saturday at Segra Park in Columbia, while Nolan Nawrocki's 6th-inning blast put the Tigers ahead 4-3 on Sunday and Blake Wright's insurance run bomb in the 8th turned out to be huge as the Gamecocks got a run in the 9th on an Ethan Petry home run.

That home run was the only run or hit South Carolina managed on the Clemson bullpen in four innings of work as Drew Titsworth, Nick Clayton, Matthew Marchal and Austin Gordon were spectacular against the Gamecocks.

The bullpen was also good on Saturday, covering 7 innings and giving up 3 runs, though a defensive lapse in right field in the 9th was responsible for some of those.

In the preseason, Clemson coach Erik Bakich indicated this was a deep and talented pitching staff and through the first 10 games it has proved to be just that.

For the most part, Clemson played well in the field over the weekend, especially on Sunday with a strikeout/throw out double play, running catch in left-center and a scoop at first with the tying runner on third.

Timely hitting, solid defense and stellar relief pitching will win you a lot of games in college baseball.

I'm generally a basher of the ACC Network Extra production, but Sunday's presentation was excellent, though the bar has not been set very high through the first three weekends of the season.

Clemson Baseball has one more weekend prior to ACC play beginning.

The Tigers are off until Wednesday when they take on Kansas State at Doug Kingsmore Stadium, before hosting UNC Greensboro from March 8th through 10th.

Kansas State is 7-3 and will take on Tennessee in Knoxville on Tuesday before making the trip to Clemson.

UNC Greensboro is 7-4 with one of those wins coming over No. 1 Wake Forest on February 20th in Greensboro.

Wednesday's game is scheduled for 4 p.m., while the weekend series is scheduled for 4 p.m. on Friday and 2 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday.

All four games are scheduled to be televised on ACC Network Extra.