Clemson Baseball Addresses Rivalry Celebrations Following Sunday's Series Win

In-state rivalries make every game bigger, and that’s especially true in college baseball.

Whether emotions boil over or excitement is at its best, that’s what was seen between the baseball series this past weekend between No. 11 Clemson and South Carolina. However, there was a takeaway that the Tigers had from the three-game stretch that told the story of the series.

Clemson eventually won the series two games to one, including a 4-1 Saturday win and a 7-2 victory at Doug Kingsmore Stadium on Sunday that saw the team take its third-straight series on the Gamecocks in the rivalry.

On Friday night, the Gamecocks took the first game in a 7-0 beatdown at Founders Park. However, down the stretch of the game, South Carolina pitcher Alex Valentin had plenty of emotions when getting crucial outs to get the early lead in the in-state rivalry.

I've seen enough. Put a #1 next to their name. pic.twitter.com/6gkzkxIWsq
— 11Point7 College Baseball (@11point7) February 28, 2026

The theatrics fired up a garnet-clad crowd, but Clemson head coach Erik Bakich was not a fan.

After the series win on Sunday, two wins that saw the Tigers celebrate, but not to the magnitude of Valentin, Bakich was asked about if Valentin’s actions during the loss were impactful on the next two games.

“I’m totally good with celebrating big wins,” he said on Sunday. “This is huge, this series is huge. I think, for me, the line is when it goes from celebrating from your team to directing your energy to the other team. That’s probably the only distinction I would make, but I’m totally fine.”

Bakich thinks that the performance deserved to have South Carolina celebrating at the end of it. However, now that Clemson got the last laugh, the Tigers will have their own celebrations, just altogether inside the facility.

“They kicked our butt up and down the field on Friday,” he said. “That was a big win, the way [Josh] Gunther and Valentin pitched and deserve to be celebrating, for sure and we’re certainly going to celebrate this series win, because that’s what we’re after.”

Outfielder and Mercer transfer Ty Dalley said that the team remembered the excitement from the Gamecocks’ end of the diamond on Friday, but how the Tigers responded helped set the tone for how the rest of the weekend would end up playing out.

Dalley capped the series off with a solo home run in the bottom of the fourth inning, not only getting himself out of an early season slump, but putting the exclamation point on an exciting day for the Upstate of South Carolina.

“I mean, baseball’s a game full of emotions,” he said. “So, obviously, we sat and watched kind of how he reacted after the Friday night win, and we knew, we went back to the hotel, we flushed it. We knew it was in the back of our heads, but we didn’t show that type of emotion.”

Bakich wants to set the record straight: Clemson will respect celebrations. However, a little extra juice brought to other things could have added a little extra that the team thought was unnecessary.

“I’m all for team celebrations, and I don’t want that to get inflated with ‘Oh, we don’t celebrate’, because we do,” he said. “We celebrate our victories here, especially with big ones in a rivalry series.”

For the players, Dalley said that the rivalry means a lot, especially to the transfer who is experiencing it for the first time. So, the Tigers used that energy, invested it in the team and pulled out two strong wins on the back of standout pitching from Michael Sharman, Talan Bell, Drew Titsworth, Joe Allen and Danny Nelson.

“Just came out here and got two gritty wins and won the series,” Dalley said. “So, that’s what we expected to do.”

Clemson will be back in action on Wednesday night in Greenville, South Carolina, when the Tigers will face Michigan State.