Red-hot Clemson baseball picking up Top 25 rankings, NCAA Tournament projections
A month ago, the Clemson baseball team was struggling: barely over .500, losers of three straight ACC series and sitting on the wrong end of a viral TikTok video.
That feels like distant history.
After a poor March, the Tigers turned in a stunning April. And now they’re in legit contention for an NCAA Tournament bid that seemed — putting it lightly — improbable just 30 days earlier.
Perfect Game moved Clemson (28-17, 11-10 ACC) from unranked to No. 18 in its weekly Top 25 Monday on the heels of the Tigers winning a fourth-straight conference series over the weekend against a ranked Boston College team.
Clemson also popped up at No. 25 in Collegiate Baseball’s weekly poll while receiving votes in both major coaches polls and coming up just short of a Top 25 spot in the D1Baseball poll.
“Clemson was our No. 26 team without a doubt,” Kendall Rogers, the managing editor of the website, tweeted Monday. “We went back and forth on that one for sure. They are right there.”
Clemson baseball’s hot streak
In coach Erik Bakich’s first season, the Tigers have also compiled the sort of statistical résumé that bodes well for a postseason bid. Clemson is No. 12 in the NCAA’s Ratings Power Index, up 11 spots from No. 23 last week, and even higher in the D1 Baseball RPI.
After series wins over Florida State, Notre Dame, N.C. State and Boston College, Clemson has the nation’s No. 12 RPI and No. 3 strength of schedule, according to the website.
And there’s minimal drop-off in non-conference play, where Clemson is 17-7 with the No. 8 RPI and No. 7 strength of schedule, thanks in large part to a two-game series with No. 8 Coastal Carolina. (Clemson won the first game, 16-6, on April 4 at home and visits Coastal on May 10.)
Those metrics are fueling Clemson’s spot in the latest D1Baseball postseason projection for the field of 64, which has the Tigers as a No. 2 seed in the Conway region with No. 1 Coastal Carolina, No. 3 Wofford and No. 4 Davidson.
All of which felt like a longshot on April 1, with the Tigers sitting at 16-13 overall and 2-7 in the ACC after getting swept at home by an excellent Wake Forest team.
Grappling with bullpen issues and inconsistent hitting early in the season, Clemson had squandered a 1-0 series lead (and Game 2 lead) against rival South Carolina, dropped a midweeker against USC Upstate and gotten swept at home by a UCF, the first non-ACC team to sweep a three-game series at Clemson since 1985.
The last of those wins prompted the Knights baseball team to run down The Hill at Memorial Stadium, poking fun at one of Clemson football’s most well-known traditions.
But Bakich, the former Michigan coach hired last summer to replace the fired Monte Lee (who’s now thriving as a hitting coach for No. 3 USC), never lost hope.
After his team lost all three games to Wake Forest, the last two by a run apiece, he told reporters he believed “with every fiber in my body that we are going to get hot and go on a run.”
That’s exactly what they’ve done. Clemson has won 12 of its last 16 games since his proclamation on backs of hitters such as Cam Cannarella (.388, 69 hits) and Cooper Ingle (.326, 11 doubles) and football dual-sporter Will Taylor (.320, 34 RBIs).
The pitching staff has been spearheaded by junior lefty Caden Grice (3.50 earned runs average), who just picked up an ACC Pitcher of the Week nod of the week Monday after recording a career-high eight innings and nine strikeouts in a Game 3 win over Boston College while also batting .428 with 10 RBIs for the series.
Clemson gets more chances to boost its tournament chances this month with ACC series against Louisville (No. 29 RPI), Virginia Tech (No. 51) and North Carolina (No. 36) before the conference tournament May 23-28 at Durham Bulls Park Athletic Park.
The conference’s top-to-bottom strength — 10 postseason bids in the latest D1Baseball projection — is a big reason why Clemson remains in the tournament hunt despite sitting at fourth out of seven teams in the ACC Atlantic Division.
Well, that and their month-long hot streak.
“Great series win for us,” Bakich said Saturday after Clemson’s series-clinching win over Boston College. “We still have a lot of work to do. We’re just looking forward to dominating (final) exams and getting ready in our preparation for the next opponent.”
Clemson baseball remaining 2023 schedule
May 5-7: vs. No. 16 Louisville (ACC)
May 10: at Coastal Carolina
May 12-14: at Virginia Tech
May 16: vs. USC Upstate
May 18-20: vs. North Carolina
May 23-28: ACC tournament in Durham, North Carolina
June 2-5: NCAA regionals at campus sites **
June 9-12: NCAA super regionals at campus sites **
June 16-26: College World Series in Omaha, Nebraska **
If applicable **
