By Will Vandervort.

You don’t want to call it a must-win series this early in the season, but Clemson’s three-game set with Notre Dame this weekend at Doug Kingsmore Stadium will be pivotal if the Tigers hope to challenge for the ACC Atlantic Division Championship this year.

The Tigers and Irish are scheduled to open up the series at 6:30 p.m. tonight as Clemson ace Matthew Crownover (3-0, 1.80 ERA) faces Notre Dame’s Scott Kerrigan (1-1, 3.09 ERA) in Game 1.

Clemson (8-7, 1-2 ACC) comes into the three-game series two games back of first place Florida State, while NC State—who beat the Tigers two out of three last weekend—Wake Forest and Louisville are each 2-1 after the first weekend of conference play.

Like Clemson, the Irish (12-3, 1-2 ACC) come into the series with two losses after dropping two games at Georgia Tech in their ACC opening series.

“It was one weekend. No one in the ACC won on the road last week. Every team that was on the road came away with two losses, minimum,” Clemson head coach Jack Leggett said. “It is a tough conference. You have to understand that the game of baseball is a tough game. It is a momentum driven game. If we get our confidence back in our dugout and we start to get a little bit on a role, I think we will find ourselves where we want to be in the end.”

The Tigers wanted to be where they were two weeks ago when they took two of three games from No. 7 South Carolina. Since then they have not been able to find that magic. They have lost four of their last five games, including three straight.

Since a 7-0 win over the Gamecocks in Columbia on March 2, Clemson has lost to Winthrop, was drilled twice by NC State last weekend and then this past Wednesday were upset by Michigan State at Fluor Field in Greenville.

“You can point to that Winthrop game. Within twenty-four hours we went on an emotional rollercoaster,” Leggett said. “We went from a real high to whatever could go wrong went wrong against Winthrop. It was a tough day for us. Chalk that up as baseball.”

After getting a 6-4 victory over the Wolfpack that following Friday, a game in which Crownover was dealing it (two hits and one run in seven innings) Clemson gave up 20 runs in the following two games in the series and then allowed eight more in Wednesday’s loss to the Spartans.

“Crownover did a really nice job and then Zack (Erwin) and Brody (Koerner) just did have the same stuff that they had the week before. That is tough to duplicate,” Leggett said. “Brody threw as good as you possibly could throw against South Carolina that Monday and probably just tried to do too much (against NC State) and get a little extra on things knowing he had to probably back (the South Carolina win) up.

“I chalk that up to experience. It is one of those things. I trust that he and Zack will be back and will be good for us this weekend and will be back in it.”

Clemson will need both of them this weekend. Notre Dame, who has played all 15 games on the road so far this year, took two of three games at Oklahoma to open the year and then knocked off Georgia Tech, 3-2, in 10 innings in Game 1 last weekend. In between, they won 10 straight.

The Irish come in with a rating percentage index (RPI) of No. 12 by Warren Nolan.

“This is going to be a good challenge. They have been playing well and they have been playing with a lot of confidence,” Leggett said. “They have guys out there throwing strikes so it will be a good challenge for our hitters, but it will also be a good challenge for our pitchers because they also have a good offensive lineup.”