Walk This Way: Clemson breaks through to take game two against South Carolina
GREENVILLE -- For the third straight year, the Tigers fell to South Carolina on Friday night of the Reedy River Rivalry but bounced back in Greenville the very next day.
Patrick Cromwell hit 1-for-4 with two RBIs, one being a SAC fly driving in the game’s first run in the third inning; the other was a single up the middle with two outs to give Clemson a 3-1 lead in the bottom of the fourth.
Clemson got its first two batters on base in the first five innings but wasn’t able to do any damage until the sacrifice fly in the third inning. Then, the Tigers were able to score in three consecutive innings to give them momentum of the game and ultimately the series.
South Carolina was coming off of a tremendous pitching performance from Adam Hill, who struck out 14 batters in the Gamecocks’ 3-2 walk-off win on Friday night. This afternoon in Greenville, South Carolina’s pitching staff couldn’t get a hold of the strike zone. Clemson was a lot more patient at the plate tonight, drawing ten walks to always keep South Carolina on its heels.
Eventually, Clemson had to break through.
“I felt like we needed a two-out hit,” head coach Monte Lee said. “They were probably putting too much pressure on themselves in those moments instead of just being aggressive. You got three strikes to work with and use every one of them with runners in scoring position.”
The Tigers went 2-for-10 when there were two outs while South Carolina went 1-for-8, but those two Clemson hits were all it needed.
Cromwell gave his head coach just what he wanted in the fourth inning with his two-out single, which gave Clemson some breathing room. But sophomore Kyle Wilkie gave Clemson its biggest hit of the day.
The catcher hit a two-out single through the right side to score two runs in the bottom of the fifth and give the Tigers a 5-1 lead they wouldn’t give up. Lee said Wilkie, who came into the game batting .138, has always been a confident kid and likes to tell his coach he’ll see him at the postgame press conference.
“I told him if he had two hits today, he’d be hitting what he bench presses, which is about .185,” Lee said with a huge smile.
Wilkie’s 2-for-4 afternoon put his average right at .182 but gave Clemson all the power it needed to hold on to a comfortable lead.
Clemson’s defense had a much better game against South Carolina on Saturday than they did on Friday night. While Clemson’s high-powered offense was only able to get two hits, its high-energy defense had two errors in the loss.
The pitching, led by starter Brooks Crawford and Ryan Miller in relief, and defensive playmaking ability was the reason Clemson was able to hold off any chance of a South Carolina comeback.
Crawford went four and two-thirds innings, giving up three hits and one run on 20 batters faced. Mat Clarke got the win after retiring the only batter he faced in the fifth inning, and Miller took the reigns from there with a steady performance to end the game, only giving up four hits in the final four innings.
After Clemson’s first loss of the season, Lee was excited to see how his players would respond. Wilkie said his teammates were still calm, confident, and knew they weren't going to be perfect throughout the season.
“As a coach, we feel everything. We feel all the emotions and the frustrations,” Lee said. “The one thing I always ask our team to do is, ‘look, let’s learn from when we lose, but let’s move forward. You guys got to continue to be confident, you got to be loose, you got to enjoy being together. We got to enjoy coming to the ballpark every day regardless if we are on a five-game winning streak or we just lost a tough game like we did last night at South Carolina.’
“I think our guys do a great job of staying loose, turning the page and moving on from it.”
The Tigers look to win the series for the fourth year in a row tomorrow back home at Doug Kingsmore Stadium at 2:00 PM in the rubber match of this great rivalry.