Eight runs. One inning. No. 8 Clemson baseball trailed No. 3 Georgia Tech 5-2 in the bottom of the fifth Saturday and scored eight times to blow the game wide open. Final score, 13-7. The Tigers avoid the sweep, grab their first ACC win, and move to 16-4 overall, 1-2 in conference play.
You want to know what changed? After getting run-ruled 10-0 Thursday and losing 9-3 Friday, Clemson finally hit with runners on base. Seven-for-17 with runners in scoring position. They’d gone hitless in seven RISP at-bats through the first two games. Fourteen hits total Saturday. Nine walks. Georgia Tech went through nine pitchers. Nine.
Clemson got after it in the first inning. Purify doubled down the third base line, Savoie took one off the hip, and both stole bags to put runners at second and third with one out. Jarrell drove in Purify on a groundout. Gaffney singled. Crighton laced one through the left side. 2-0 Clemson. More runs in one inning than the Tigers scored in all of Game 1.
Baker’s solo shot in the second made it 2-1. Then not much happened for a while. Titsworth was efficient through three innings, 50 pitches, keeping Georgia Tech off balance. Bell took over in the fourth and got through it clean.
The fifth is where the whole game changed. Both ways.
Zuckerman led off the top half with a homer off Bell to tie it 2-2. Baker doubled. Daniel singled him to third. Brown came on in relief for Bell, and Kerce, who’d been killing Clemson all weekend, crushed a three-run shot to left on an 0-2 pitch. Just like that, 5-2. The Doug Kingsmore crowd went quiet. Third straight game where the home run ball put Clemson in a hole. You could feel it.
But here’s what was different about Saturday. Clemson didn’t fold.
Savoie got plunked to start the bottom of the fifth. McCladdie reached on a fielder’s choice. And then Jarrell, first pitch, sent it to center field. Two-run homer. His eighth. 5-4. Gaffney got hit by a pitch. Wild pitch moved him up. Crighton doubled to right and tied it at five.
Then Georgia Tech’s pitching staff completely unraveled. McKelvey replaced Blakely and walked Lichtenberger on four pitches. Four. He was done. Spivey came on and walked Dillard. Bases loaded. Passed ball scored Crighton. 6-5 Tigers. Dalley singled two more home. 8-5. Purify walked. Now they brought in Vicens. Vicens walked Savoie. Bases loaded again. Underwood replaced Vicens and McCladdie ripped a two-run double to left center. 10-5. Five pitchers to get through one inning, and Georgia Tech still couldn’t find anyone to throw strikes.
Barfield finally got Jarrell to ground out and end it.
The sixth was more of the same. Shadek on the mound, Gaffney reached on an error, Crighton singled, Lichtenberger bunted them over, Dillard walked. Bases loaded. Dalley singled in another run. Purify walked in a run. Savoie hit a sac fly. 13-5. At that point it was just about finishing the thing.
Kerce kept hitting because that’s what Kerce did all series. Doubled in a run in the seventh. Baker added an RBI groundout in the eighth. Kerce’s final series line: 7-for-12, 6 RBI. Best performance of the weekend from either roster. But none of that mattered by the late innings because Clemson’s bullpen was dealing. Brown threw 3.0 innings, gave up two runs on four hits, struck out three, walked nobody. Nelson finished it off with 2.0 innings and three strikeouts. Here’s the number that tells you everything about the pitching Saturday: zero walks. The entire Clemson staff. After issuing six in Game 2.
McCladdie went 4-for-6 with three doubles. Friday night he was 1-for-5 with six guys left on base. Crighton had three hits and two RBI. Dalley collected three more knocks with three RBI, his second straight multi-hit game in this series. Dillard didn’t get a hit but walked three times and scored twice, which tells you how patient this lineup was when they needed to be.
Georgia Tech takes the series 2-1. Clemson’s ACC record is 1-2 and that’s a rough start, no way around it. But getting swept at home to open conference play would have been a different kind of problem entirely. Saturday proved the first two games were about execution, not talent. This lineup can hit. They showed it when it counted.
Clemson heads to Mount Pleasant Tuesday to play College of Charleston at 6 p.m. Non-conference, road game, chance to stack a win before ACC play picks back up. After what happened in the fifth inning Saturday, nobody on that schedule should feel comfortable.
