With the schedule for the ACC Tournament being announced on Sunday, Erik Bakich now has a better idea of how he might structure his starting pitchers this week in Charlotte.

Clemson is the No. 2 seed and will play in Pool B with No. 7 Louisville and No. 11 Miami. The Tigers won’t even take the field until Thursday, when they face the Hurricanes at 11 a.m.

The Cardinals will take on Miami on Tuesday, and due to pool play rules that benefit the highest seeds in each pool, Clemson will only need to beat the winner of that game to advance to the semifinals on Saturday.

Knowing which team his squad will need to beat in order to advance gives Bakich some flexibility in how he approaches setting up his starting rotation.

“It sets up some strategy in how we structure the pitching staff,” Bakich said. “And that is a huge advantage when you are one of those top seeds.”

“The way we did it last year, which I thought made a lot of sense, was we treated it like any other week. Where you have a midweek game and conference games. And the game that you need to win in order to advance to the semifinals is like a conference game and the game that is quote… people say meaningless, but it means a lot, but that is more like a midweek game.”

If Miami were to lose to Louisville on Tuesday, Bakich will likely choose to treat the Tigers’ opening game against the Hurricanes on Thursday like he would any other midweek game. However, the head coach maintains that his team would still into that game like they would any other, and that is with the intent to win.

With Clemson still playing for a national seed, every game is still important.

“It’s a totally different feeling between winning and losing so you want to keep those good feelings going,” Bakich said. “But it will be like how we would structure midweek pitching for that game, and how we would structure conference or weekend pitching for the other ones.”

If Miami were to beat Louisville on Thursday, that means the Tigers would likely go with Ethan Darden, who has served as the Friday starter for the past two weekends. And that would also allow Darden to pitch on his normal six days rest.

Tristan Smith could also be an option, as the left-handed pitcher was the Tigers’ Friday starter for much of the season. Either way, don’t expect freshman sensation Aidan Knaak to go until Saturday, as Bakich said him starting on Saturday over the weekend means he would likely go in the semifinal round. But first the Tigers have to get out of pool play.

“Aidan starting on a Saturday kind of sets him up to pitch on Saturday’s from here on out, so that will be something that we look at,” Bakich said. “We got to get to Saturday, so first we got to take care of business.”

“We will need to take it one game at a time to advance that way, but yeah, Aidan will kind of set up to kind of having him go on that Saturday. Before we get to that, it will be preparation. We will have an off day (Sunday) and head down there on Monday. So we look forward to a few good days of preparation to get ready to play Miami.”