By Will Vandervort
Zack Erwin was not worried about Western Carolina’s eight-game winning streak heading into Wednesday night’s game. He wasn’t even worried about the fact the Catamounts averaged 7.9 runs per game during the streak. The only thing the freshman was concerned about in his first career start was the first inning.
“I wanted to have a real good first inning,” he said. “That has been a problem for me since high school so I really wanted to focus on the first inning.”
Mission accomplished. Erwin got Western Carolina leadoff hitter Aaron Attaway to strikeout looking to start the game and then induced Julian Ridings and Tyler White into fly balls – three up and three down. From there, Erwin cruised, allowing only one run, while scattering four hits in five innings of work as 13th-ranked Clemson won 12-1 at Doug Kingsmore Stadium.
“It felt nice to get the win,” Erwin said. “It has been a while since I got one, but most importantly the team got the win so now it is time to move on to the next one.”
The Catamounts (27-17) came into Wednesday’s game as one of the best scoring team’s in the country. But Erwin, Brody Koerner, Joseph Moorefield, Clay Bates and Jackson Campana combined to limit them to nine hits.
“(Erwin) did a nice job, and all of our pitchers did a nice job tonight,” Clemson head coach Jack Leggett said. “That’s a good hitting team. When they get rolling and you let them get into a rhythm, you can find yourself in trouble really quick. But all of pitchers pitched well and we played good defense.”
Erwin, who came into the game leading the Tigers with 21 1/3 innings of relief work, said Western Carolina crowds the plate a lot and can reach every part of the plate well. The Tigers game plan was to try and go inside a lot and try to jam them.
“It worked pretty well,” the lefty said. “It kept them off the plate, diving away and hitting into doubles and stuff like that.”
As Erwin controlled things from the mound, catcher Garrett Boulware, who had been in a slump, got the offense going. The sophomore drove in four runs and had three hits in helping Clemson record 17 hits.
“It is one of those things where you don’t know what you are doing,” Boulware said. “You are swinging the bat and you don’t know why the ball is going straight up in the air. We made a couple of little adjustments and it worked tonight.
“We will kind of stick with that and try to take another run with it.”
Clemson’s 17 hits were its most in 59 games. The Catamount pitchers have been good to Clemson this season. The Tigers (28-13) scored 12 runs and had 14 hits on April 9 against Western.
“It hasn’t always been like that in the past,” Leggett said. “They always play us very well. They are a very good team and when you play them on a good night, you are in for a long game. But we played well tonight. It was one of our better games.”
Clemson will host ACC foe Georgia Tech this weekend in a three-game series starting Friday at 7 p.m.