On Friday afternoon the Clemson Tigers took to the baseball field at Doug Kingsmore Stadium under blue and sunny skies for the first official practice of the 2017 season.

As last year’s defending ACC Champions the Tigers are coming out ambitious and driven working to build off of last year’s success but also hoping to produce an even more successful season this year.

Here is what we heard.

“We won an ACC Championship. Twenty-four of our forty-four wins were come-from-behind wins so I think it really exemplified the toughness of our team last year and the message of our team,” Clemson head coach Monte Lee said on Friday.

Although the team had a very successful season last year they are not satisfied with setting for just that.

“As great as last year was and I’m so proud of last year’s team and all the guys that are returning, the one message is yeah we had a great year last year, but we ultimately didn’t wind up where we wanted to be” Lee said.

Clemson’s 2016 season concluded with a loss to Oklahoma State in a regional that Clemson hosted. This eliminated them from the NCAA tournament and thus ended their hopes of a College World Series Championship in Omaha.

“So the guys have come back with a chip on their shoulder. They’re very hungry to get today started, to compete against each other and three weeks from now we will start our season against somebody else in the other dugout,” Le  said. “So expectations are high. I think our guys are ready to go. And we are very excited about today.”

In exactly three weeks on Feb. 17,  the Tigers will open their season at home against Wright State in a three-game series. When asked if later down the road, playing such strong ACC teams as Louisville, Florida State, and NC State will have an effect Lee responded,

“We play Wright State for a three-game set and then we got Western Carolina after that,” he said. “The old cliché, ‘We play one game at a time,’ I truly believe that. I truly believe that the opponent is the baseball. That’s the opponent. We don’t care who the other team is in the dugout. It doesn’t matter what color their uniform is. The only thing we are going to do is look at our opponent’s strengths and weaknesses and we’re going to try to find a way to combat that and find a way to win that ball game.”

Clemson also has the 2016 National Player of the Year in Seth Beer returning after making history as the very first freshman to be awarded such an honor. With a batting average of .369 he led the team in home runs (18), second in RBIs (70), and tied with Chase Pinder for the most hits with 75.

“I can only prepare myself the best I can when it comes to the aspect of the sport and obviously everything that goes along with it,” Beer said. “But obviously it’s in the back of my mind that I might have to take walks and I might be intentionally walked, but in my opinion I see that as a good thing. That’s another person that can get on base and help our team win and if that’s what it takes then I’m willing to do that a hundred times.”

Beer says this year won’t be the first season he will have to adjust to intentional walks.

“It’s a difficult adjustment because you obviously want to go out there and be that guy every day and everybody wants to be that guy and so it was frustrating at first to take walks when you feel like if you had the shot you would give your team a chance, but I know that there’s eight other guys out here that are itching for that chance as well so it’s one of those things where if they walk me they got a couple other guys coming up that are going to be itching just as hard as I am,” he said.