Seven days for seven wins

By Will Vandervort.

By Will Vandervort

It’s not often a team can claim it won seven games within a seven day period. In fact, it has not happened at Clemson since 1996, when Jack Leggett’s third Clemson team won seven from Feb. 24-March 2 that year.

Leggett’s 20th Clemson team can now lay claim to that feat as well as it picked up its seventh win in seven days with an 11-6 victory over Georgia Southern Sunday at Doug Kingsmore Stadium.

“It’s been a good week,” said catcher Garrett Boulware, who had two hits and drove in a run Sunday.

The Tigers (37-15) started the long week with a doubleheader sweep of ACC foe Maryland on Monday and then took two from Furman at Greenville’s Fluor Field Wednesday afternoon. They completed the treacherous seven days with a three-game sweep of the Eagles, a series in which they outscored them 25-7.

“That is about as good as you can ask for,” Leggett said. “I thought we played really well this weekend. We had some good energy and we were really good offensively. Our bunt game was excellent. We ran the bases really well and we got some timely hits.

“We put pressure on them. I thought our pitching was good all weekend long and our defense was good. We have the engine churning really good right now. We just have to keep it up.”

Though Clemson is the only team in the country to have played seven games this past week, the Tigers played as if they were the rested team, while rolling through the competition, 63-18. In the seven games, they averaged nine runs per game, while the pitching staff had a combined 1.57 ERA.

“We have had a lot of doubleheaders this year, and though it is frustrating, it has helped,” Boulware said. “Earlier in the year we did not play very well in the doubleheaders so it has helped us later in the season.

“We know how to handle a doubleheader. You learn how to not let your body get warn out or anything like that. We know how to carry (our energy) throughout the entire day.”

In those games, Clemson averaged 11 hits per outing, and at least five times it smacked out 12 hits.

“It shows we are a complete team and that we have everyone on the team contributing,” Boulware said. “It shows we are consistent from top to bottom so hopefully we can continue that.”

The Tigers pounded out 14 hits on Georgia Southern Sunday, the third time this week they hit that number. Maleeke Gibson, Steven Duggar, Tyler Krieger and Thomas Brittle joined Boulware with two hits. Gibson and Krieger also drove in two runs each, while Steve Wilkerson, Mike Dunster, Shane Kennedy, Jon McGibbon, Tyler Slaton and Brittle joined Boulware with one RBI.

“It is starting to come along,” Leggett said. “We have some guys that are bunting the ball pretty well and we are doing some good things offensively and doing some good things on the bases. We are being real aggressive.”

The Tigers will try to continue to be aggressive on Tuesday when they host USC Upstate in the regular season home finale at 6:30 p.m.