CLEMSON — After giving up five unearned runs in the tenth inning, Clemson fell to Miami 8-3 on Thursday night at Doug Kingsmore Stadium.

The loss extends the Tigers’ losing streak to five. On top of that, Erik Bakich’s team has won just one of its last five series openers, and that one win came against an overmatched LaSalle team.

After falling behind 3-0 early to the Hurricanes, Clemson did respond by getting a run in the fifth and two more in the sixth to tie it up. Relievers Ariston Veasey and Dion Brown held the Canes in check over the final few innings, and the Tigers had multiple chances at winning it in the late innings.

Clemson had a runner reach third in the bottom of the eighth and the bottom of the ninth with the game still tied, but just couldn’t come up with the clutch hit, as the team finished just 3-of-13 with runners in scoring position.

“Not much to say,” Bakich said after the loss. “I do know this, something good is going to come from this. It sucks to go through it, it sucks to lose. It is the worst part of being a competitor and the worst part of sports. But something good is going to come from this.”

In the end, it was another defensive lapse that cost the Tigers. Tryston McCladdie, who started at third for the first time since the South Carolina series, made both of the team’s errors on the night. His fielding error with the bases loaded with two outs in the top of the tenth allowed all three Miami runners to score, and then the Hurricanes were able to tack on two more with the inning being extended.

The defensive miscues are nothing new for this team. Bakich has watched on as the Tigers have been charged with 38 errors across the first 27 games. After allowing five unearned runs in the latest loss, Clemson has now allowed 28 on the season.

“I think the players on the field and everybody at some point just has to say enough is enough,” Bakich said. “There is a lot of frustration, obviously. It’s not just the ground ball that got down the line that scored three runs. We had twice a runner on third with less than two outs and didn’t score. We had our opportunities. We had second and third with two outs in the ninth and we didn’t get a two-out RBI. We had our chances. We have no one to blame but ourselves.”

And the generally overly positive Bakich wasn’t interested in making any excuses. The fourth-year head coach is fully looking inward, and he’s hoping his team is doing the same.

“We’re not getting screwed,” he said. “Everybody doesn’t get the calls, everybody gets bad hops, that doesn’t matter. What matters is that we need to own it. We need to play better. We need to coach better. We need to do all the things to get ourselves out of this hole.”

Despite the turmoil his team is currently facing, Bakich refuses to give up on the season. After Tuesday’s heartbreaking loss to Coastal Carolina, the head coach insisted it wasn’t quite time to hit the panic button. When asked if he still felt that way after the latest heartbreaker that dropped his team to 1-6 in ACC play, Bakich had a similar response.

“I do. It is early enough in the season where we are not panicking in terms of thinking about the whole season collectively,” Bakich said. “But it’s urgent enough where we need to play better to turn this around and not make the same mistakes that we keep making. Defensively, besides those two ground balls to third, we showed some improvement tonight, but it wasn’t good enough.”

In fact, Bakich’s fourth season at the helm is playing out a little like his first in 2023. On April 1, after getting swept at Wake Forest, Clemson was just 16-13 overall and 2-7 in conference play. That team would go on an absolute tear, going 28-6 the rest of the way to finish 44-19. The Tigers won an ACC Championship that season and earned the No. 4 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament.

Whether this team can rebound and have a similar season is yet to be determined. Bakich isn’t even thinking that far ahead anyway. Right now, he is focused on game two against Miami and just trying to find a way to win one baseball game.

“We are getting closer,” the head coach said. “But there are no moral victories, and nobody cares. And they shouldn’t. They should want to see the results. Did Clemson win? Yes or no. Why not? So we’re not panicking, but the urgency button is all the way smashed down because we need to correct our mistakes and stop making the same stupid mistakes over and over.”