By the skin of its teeth, Clemson baseball finds itself in the NCAA Tournament. That idiom has never found a more deserving partner than this year\u2019s squad, which seemed to do everything in its power to both play its way out of and into the field of 64 before becoming the absolute final team included in postseason play.
\nIt has been an interesting year, one that has been dominated by wide-lens discussions of who and what Clemson baseball is and should be. Those are important conversations, but as the season turned, they distracted us from seeing what was happening right under our noses.
\nThe first part of the season was defined largely by an inability to do the simple things. Opening Day featured a shutout at the hands of West Virginia\u2014a quality team that, nevertheless, failed to make the NCAA field. Lackluster midweek performances turned into losses to inferior opponents like Winthrop, Presbyterian College, and Charleston Southern.
\nInfield defense was a struggle due to the absence of vocal leadership from Tyler Krieger, whose shoulder injury is still a recurring storyline. The Sunday starter slot has been an issue, as well, a prime reason why the team went 5-8 in getaway games. Every veteran bullpen arm either began the season injured or developed an injury over the course of the year.
\nPuncture wounds began to deepen as the calendar advanced. At every turn, the Tigers seemed destined to turn gold back into straw. After a late-season five-game win streak, Clemson was shut out at Georgia in a game that wasn\u2019t nearly as close as the 7-0 final score indicated.
\nDown the stretch, it seemed the Tigers wouldn\u2019t get out of their own way. They blew late-inning leads twice in Atlanta and twice at home against Louisville. In all four games, it appeared Jack Leggett\u2019s team was more likely than not to win, but self-inflicted wounds turned each game back in favor of the opposition.
\nThen came a loss in a makeup game at Wofford that was so thoroughly embarrassing to all involved that nearly everyone who experienced the game\u2014as a participant, spectator, listener, or viewer\u2014put the nail in Clemson\u2019s coffin. After all, the schedule only got increasingly tougher from there, and the team that took the field on that fateful Tuesday night looked nothing like one destined for the postseason.
\nBut something happened after that game. Clemson started to control its fate in ways it had neglected for the first 80 percent of the season.
\nFirst, it beat the College of Charleston in a midweek game. At the time, it raised eyebrows because it came right on the heels of that loss to an inferior Wofford club, but it seemed to matter very little. It beat Georgia Southern twice in a weekend series, blowing an opportunity to sweep on Sunday but playing better baseball in the process.
\nThe Tigers were down 10-0 after two innings against Furman in what felt like Wofford 2.0. Shoddy defense and pitching mistakes tried to bury Clemson again, but the Tigers responded by scoring about a zillion runs and winning handily against a Paladins squad that was an unmitigated disaster on the mound and did virtually nothing to halt the onslaught.
\nI was in Tallahassee for what followed, and it was unimaginable. Every positive quality of Clemson\u2019s team was highlighted, and the weaknesses were either minimized or alleviated altogether as the Tigers flatly embarrassed national power Florida State on its own field. The punctuation mark\u2014a 9-6 win on FSU\u2019s Senior Day that wasn\u2019t nearly that close\u2014turned the attentions of the college baseball world toward the Tigers.
\nYes, a 1-2 record in the ACC Tournament wasn\u2019t great, but the one win was against national seed Louisville. That gave the Tigers a 6-3 record against RPI top-25 teams in the month of May. They played their best baseball with their backs against the wall while facing the best competition the schedule had to offer.
\nMeanwhile, we largely missed this compilation of resume enhancements being preoccupied with other things. We discussed the broader aspects of the program and ignored the daily struggles the Tigers started winning.
\nWe talked about futures and coaches and rumors and standards and facilities as if the current team\u2019s fate had been sealed. Many of these late developments flew under the radar because we failed to see how they fit into the grand scheme of the season.
\nClemson became an NCAA Tournament team while we\u2014well, many of us\u2014concerned ourselves with other things. Now, all of a sudden, those big-picture discussions don\u2019t seem so pressing. There are games still to be played.
\nIt\u2019s foolish to pretend making a regional as the third seed is up to Clemson\u2019s\u2014and Jack Leggett\u2019s\u2014standards. Of course it isn\u2019t. However, even getting to that point required a herculean effort from the current roster of players and coaches this season, so they should be commended for a late-season surge that confounded experts and led to a stressful Selection Monday for the Tigers and their fans.
\nThe future that seemed so immediate mere days ago seems a long way off since the selection committee extended Clemson\u2019s season. It took a great deal to get there, and it\u2019ll take more than that to move deeper into the summer.
\nClemson baseball is still playing, if only by the skin of its teeth. Maybe we\u2019ll all forget the future for a moment and enjoy the ride this time.<\/p>\n