It was a long offseason for the Clemson baseball program after Tennessee came out on top last year in the Clemson Regional.
In the winners bracket game of the 2023 regional, the Vols were down to their final out, before a three-run home kept Tennessee alive. The Vols went on to win that game in 14 innings and ultimately won the Clemson Regional, before eventually advancing to the College World Series.
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That loss fueled Clemson the entire offseason and throughout this year as the Tigers are now back hosting a regional once again. Erik Bakich recently spoke about how last year’s performance motivated this year’s team.
“We label adversity as a good thing. And none more than the way last year ended after the way it was going prior to that with the win streak and going a million miles an hour. And then just kind of crash and burning all at once in less than a 24-hour period,” Erik Bakich said. “So the taste of that and the feeling of that has certainly fueled the returners on this team. It’s been a chip on their shoulder.”
Clemson had won 16 straight games entering last year’s NCAA Tournament and pushed that streak to 17 in a row with a win over Lipscomb in its opening game.
However, that streak came to a screeching halt against the Vols. The Tigers ended up not only losing to Tennessee but also dropped their next game to Charlotte and were eliminated.
Clemson is now once again in the same spot it was in last year — as a national seed entering the postseason. It took a lot of hard work to get back to this point, and Clemson is hoping for a better result in 2024.
Bakich said that he could tell during the preseason that his team was playing with some extra motivation this year.
“We noticed it in the fall. And it was not just in how they approach baseball but how they approached everything. They were just elite in a lot of areas, whether it was academics shattering two GPA records in the fall semester and spring semester. Or their approach to training and games and everything,” Bakich said. “So I think that all stems from knowing that the opportunity to get hot at the right time is earned, it’s not given. You’ve gotta earn it by doing all the little things the entire time all along the way and this group has.”
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