If I knew it was that simple I would have said something a long time ago. Just last week, I wondered if Clemson baseball was going to find their way to a 65th straight non-losing season and here we are a week later with the Tigers projected to make a regional by at least one national source. Baseball’s a funny game, as I said last week.
With a 9-2 victory over a good USC-Upstate team Wednesday night Clemson is riding a 7-game winning streak headed into the home stretch of the regular season.
The Tigers are playing well, but I’m still cautious looking at the schedule ahead. Ten remaining regular season games include a 3-game trip to face Georgia Tech in Atlanta this weekend, a date with South Carolina in Clemson next Tuesday, three games in Tallahassee next weekend and a regular season ending 3-game series back in Clemson with Duke. After that, it’s the ACC tournament May 25-30 in Durham and the dreaded, at least to me, Pool play.
| Team | Date | Location | Record | RPI |
| Georgia Tech | 5/7-5/9 | Atlanta | 21-18 | 50 |
| South Carolina | 5/11 | Clemson | 27-15 | 15 |
| Florida State | 5/14-5/16 | Tallahassee | 23-16 | 62 |
| Duke | 5/20-5/22 | Clemson | 19-18 | 55 |
Now for the good news: Clemson is playing well at the right time and their upcoming opponents are not necessarily doing the same. Georgia Tech had an up and down week last week, beating Georgia midweek before losing 2 of 3 to Kennesaw State (133 RPI), South Carolina was swept by Ole Miss at Swayze Field (where Clemson is currently projected for a regional) before rallying past North Florida Wednesday night and Florida State dropped a game to Troy (142 RPI).
At 22-18 and 15-12 in the ACC the Tigers are in much better shape than this time last week. Still headed into the final 10 games you have to think the Georgia Tech series is a toss up with a slight home field edge to the Yellow Jackets. Anything can happen against the Gamecocks and the Seminoles should be favored in Tallahassee.
That leaves the Duke series in Clemson as perhaps the determining factor in finishing over .500 and helping calculate how many games the Tigers need to win in Durham to determine their postseason fate.
At the beginning of the season no one thought the Duke series would potentially be so important, but no one thought Clemson would sweep Louisville either and these final 10 games are setting up to be fascinating.
Baseball’s a funny game.
