With Opening Day just one week away, expectations are high for the Clemson baseball team in 2024.
After a wildly successful season in year one under Erik Bakich that saw the Tigers win their first ACC Championship since 2016, many are expecting the program to take that next step, and that includes the head coach himself.
"Clemson baseball should be a team that expects to go to Omaha," Bakich told All Clemson Tigers. "There's a handful of schools out there that should say that as well. But 12 trips to Omaha, including six from the (Jack) Leggett era from 1995 to 2010, to make six trips in that span, there's an expectation among fans and college baseball enthusiasts that that's Clemson baseball in the modern era."
While Clemson has made 13 appearances in the College World Series, the last time the Tigers punched their ticket to Omaha was way back in 2010. In fact, that is the last time the program was able to advance past the regional round.
Whether or not this program can break that drought in 2024 remains to be seen, but make no mistake, that is the expectation.
"To have a 13-year drought of going to Omaha, that's just too long for a program like this because nobody's lowered the standards," Bakich said. "No one's lowered the expectations. It's just the expectations haven't been met. And we've been to some regionals in that time. But in order to get out of it, you just got to get hot at the right time."
And no team was hotter at the end than the Clemson baseball team was last season, as the Tigers carried a 16-game winning streak into regional play, including a 4-0 performance in the ACC Tournament.
But it wasn't meant to be. In one of the most exciting games of the entire season, Bakich's team would drop an emotional, heartbreaking 14-inning contest to Tennessee in the Clemson regional. The Tigers would be eliminated a day later by Charlotte.
"There are no excuses," Bakich said. "It's just, you got to get hot at the right time and you just got to hope that you have put in enough that you can catch some breaks and find a little bit of luck, but be fortunate enough to be one of those teams that's earned the opportunity to get hot at the end. And we were hot. We just didn't execute. That's the other thing. You got to execute. And for whatever reason, we weren't able to close that game out in the ninth inning and we weren't able to do enough offensively to score that run in the bottom of the 10th when we had bases loaded nobody out. We have no one to blame but ourselves."
Now the Tigers are just looking for another opportunity, and that journey begins next Friday, as Clemson opens the season at home with a three-game set against reigning Big East champion, Xavier.
"Ultimately it's just going to happen," Bakcih said. "I mean, it's just going to happen. We're just going to get over the hump. The program's going to get back to Omaha and then that will set off a tidal wave of this program, kind of like how it was with Coach Leggett when he went six times in those first whatever, 15, 16 years. And it'll be like that again, where the idea is that Clemson baseball's in Omaha more than it's not. But you got to earn it. And it takes what it takes."
The staff at AllClemsonTigers.com will continue to bring you free access to news stories, features, press conferences, recruiting mailbags and game recaps, but Death Valley Domain offers something else.
Want to know more about what’s going on behind the scenes and get exclusive scoops surrounding the team? Snag that membership today and keep up with everything going on around Clemson athletics, a monthly subscription of $4.99 gets you all this and more.
Want to save $10? Sign up for an entire year for just $49.99 right now.
►LIKE us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/allclemson
►SUBSCRIBE: https://www.youtube.com/c/AllClemson
►FOLLOW All Clemson on Twitter:https://twitter.com/All_Clemson