Clemson Tigers Take Steep Tumble, Fall Out of National Rankings

It's been a pretty brutal two-week stretch for Clemson Baseball, dropping six of their past nine contests, which has taken them from a borderline top-10 team to unranked in just one week.

On Monday morning, D1 Baseball released its Week 6 rankings and left Clemson off the list entirely, despite the Tigers holding the No. 11 spot in last week's poll. D1 Baseball wasn't the only outlet to drop them, either, as every major national outlet booted Clemson from their rankings, with NCBWA and Baseball America being the two exceptions, slotting the Tigers in at No. 24.

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The sudden and steep decline in their rankings comes after an extremely turbulent week that saw the Tigers begin 2-0, with wins over Charleston and the Citadel. Unfortunately, though, it was all downhill from there.

Clemson opened their first road series of the year against Notre Dame on Friday — also their second ACC series of the season — and stumbled right out of the gate, getting shut out 6-0 by the Fighting Irish. The Tigers managed just four hits in the loss while Preseason All-American Aidan Knaak dropped to an 0-3 record as a starter.

Game two of the series was the closest, as it remained back and forth for essentially the entire contest. Tigers fifth-year Michael Sharman gave up four runs within the first two innings, but the trio of Jack Crighton, Tryston McCladdie and Jacob Jarell kept their team in the game, combining for seven hits, five runs and four RBIs.

Yet and still, Clemson wouldn't come out on top, as Nate Savoie — who filled in at catcher for the game — committed a game-losing throwing error.

The final game was a perfect mix of the entire series, as three different Clemson pitchers allowed two earned runs each, two infield errors occurred, and the bats couldn't get anything going. While 13 hits are a lot to the plain eye, it’s important to include the context that 10 of those came from just four batters, and only converting four of those hits into runs is lackluster, especially when two of the four runs came in the final inning.

The Tigers now sit at 18-7 overall and 1-5 in conference play, which is brutal to lay eyes on after getting off to such an impressive 15-1 start. Nevertheless, a fair number of things need to change sooner rather than later if Bakich and his guys even want to sniff a super regional, let alone Omaha.

Clemson returns home on Tuesday, March 24, at 7:00 p.m. EST at Doug Kingsmore Stadium to face Coastal Carolina before turning around to host Miami for its second home ACC series of the year this weekend.