The Tigers baseball team started slow but exploded late to beat the Presbyterian Blue Hose on Tuesday night in Doug Kingsmore 8-2.
Sophomore leadoff hitter, Cam Canarella led off the bottom of the first with a home run on the first pitch he saw for an early Tigers lead.
Austin Gordon got the mid-week start for the Tigers. Arguably the ace of the staff went two innings and threw 43 pitching allowing no hits with 2 strikeouts and a walk and a hit batter.
Joe Allen relieved Gordon and immediately got himself into trouble allowing two runs spread across 2 hits before settling in and giving the Tigers a quality 4 innings and getting the win.
The Tigers went down 2-1 before Jimmy Obertop tied the game in the 3rd with his first home run of the season. He added two more hits and another RBI for a big day for the transfer from Michigan. He was asked about what he saw on that home run, “thanks to the good scouting report, I knew he had a good cutter…I was trying to put a good swing on it. Anything to help the team.”
Clemson broke the score open in the bottom of the 7th when freshman Jarren Purify, after battling in his previous three at-bats, unloaded a Caden Barnett slider over the left field fence to blow it open at 8-2.
When speaking about Purify, Head Coach Erik Bakich said, “he’s just a special kid who’s a good baseball player…he’s an easy kid to root for.”
The Tigers used 4 pitchers in the victory and only allowed 3 total hits, with Allen getting the win. Sophomore Ethan Darden pitched 2 innings and looked tremendous, allowing only one hit and Junior Ty Olenchuk finished off the Blue Hose with two strikeouts to close out the victory.
The only blemish, if there was one from a convincing victory was that the Tigers continued to leave runners on base, this time with 10. Bakich added, “10 isn’t too bad, I mean it’s not great, but we scored some of those runs and at the end of the day, that’s the biggest number that counts.”
The Tigers return to DKS this weekend for a three-game series against Kennesaw State.
