By Will Vandervort.

By Will Vandervort

After first looking in a fastball to take strike one, Tyler Krieger took an ugly hack at another that was high and inside. Down two strikes with the bases loaded and two outs in a tie game, the freshman looked down the third base line at Clemson head coach Jack Leggett.

“He said calm down,” Krieger said.

So Krieger did just that. When Presbyterian’s Ryan Morris threw his next pitch—a curveball down and in—the Clemson shortstop laced it down the right field line to score Shane Kennedy with the game-winning run in the Tigers’ 5-4 victory Wednesday at Doug Kingsmore Stadium.

“I just happened to get a good piece of the bat on it,” said Krieger, who was 4-for-5 on the night.

Krieger’s game-winning hit allowed Clemson to extend its winning streak to seven games, the program’s longest in two years. It was also the second straight night the Tigers scored the winning run in the ninth inning. Clemson beat Western Carolina, 12-9, on Tuesday thanks to a three-run top half of the ninth.

Those wins, coupled with the 1-0 victory at Boston College on Sunday, are showing Leggett’s once young ball club is starting to grow up.

“We are finding ourselves in a lot of tough ball games and we have been able to come out on top,” the Clemson coach said.

Clemson (23-11) rallied back to get on top against Presbyterian. The Blue Hose took a 4-3 lead in the top of the seventh inning after Aaron Preston tripled with one out and later scored on a sacrifice fly from Brad Zebedis.

But Krieger brought the Tigers back in the bottom of the eighth inning. Again after chasing two pitches, he took a 1-2 offering to right centerfield for a triple and scored two pitches later when Blue Hose pitcher Chad Sanders threw wild into the dirt.

That set up the bottom of the ninth where Kennedy reached on a walk and moved to second on a baulk and advanced to third on a throwing error following a Steve Wilkerson fly ball to right field. Presbyterian (18-16) then intentionally walked Steven Duggar and Jon McGibbon to get to third baseman Jay Baum, who was already 0-for-2 on the night with the bases load.

Baum finished the night 0-for-3 as he popped it up to the shortstop for the second out. That brought up Krieger, who had already singled to left field twice and tripled to right. The shortstop’s game-winner to right was his fourth of the night and a season-high for the freshman who started the season 9-for57 (.158) in the first 19 games.

In the last 15, Krieger is hitting .350 (21-for-60) with eight RBIs.

“At the beginning of the year it was frustrating, not that I was not getting hits, but that I could not help the team,” he said. “I was kind of hurting us. But I stayed patient, the coaches have told me to stay patient and focus on the next at-bat and it is starting to come around.”

And like the rest of the team, the freshman from Johns Creek, GA is growing up before our eyes.

“They are growing up now,” Leggett said. “Krieger is getting better and better every time offensively. I think he had four hits for us tonight. He is growing up a little bit and Duggar has been good for us. If we could just get a couple of other guys to play a little bit better, then we will be okay.”