CLEMSON – After eating eggs, bacon, and other delicacies provided by a Tallahassee hotel in dreaded silence, Clemson’s 2023 baseball team trudged into a beige-washed meeting room to watch film, expecting to receive an accompanying verbal lashing from head coach Erik Bakich.

After all, the Tigers had suffered a lackluster 5-1 loss at the hands of Florida State the prior night, striking out 14 times in a painstaking eighth defeat in ACC-play. After starting 4-0, outscoring opponents by a margin of 42-11, the Tigers found themselves flirting with an overall losing record, and near the southernmost point of conference standings.

In turn, a good, old-fashioned, “chewing out” seemed like the next thing on the horizon for the 30 Tiger players headed into the lobby-level ballroom. As they braced for impact in the comfort of purple practice shirts, Bakich had another plan.

“In that team meeting, Coach Bakich told us to just start playing free,” former Clemson outfielder Will Taylor recalled. “We literally had nothing to lose, we were playing with house money. And so that was kind of our theme throughout the entire year, was that we were playing with house money.”

Around this time, Taylor and two-time captain Blake Wright remember their squad being called “aggressively mediocre,” and “another ‘down’ team for Clemson baseball.” While Taylor joked that players debated making shirts with the adages, the diagnosis still cut deep through the roster, and made Bakich’s charge even more meaningful.

“At that point, everyone had kind of written us off,” Wright said. “And I think that kind of ticked us off a little bit, because we knew we were a good team.

“So at that point, it really did feel like we’re just playing with house money, so we might as well go have fun and prove everyone wrong.”

Maybe all they needed was some bonus cash, or just a sense of belief from their skipper, but after that day in the meeting room, it all flipped around for Clemson. The Tigers beat the Seminoles twice with a 14-3 margin in the next two games, claiming their first ACC series in Bakich’s short tenure and turning momentum in their favor. 

“We used that Florida State series as momentum and belief moving on throughout the rest of the season,” former All-ACC catcher Cooper Ingle said. “It gave us so much confidence as a team that when we just play to our potential, rather than worrying about the opponent, the natural outcomes of games will take care of themselves.”

The ‘natural outcomes,’ as it turned out, proved to be very positive for a Tigers’ team that once held a 2-8 record in the ACC. After the Thursday night loss at Florida State, Clemson went on to a 26-3 finish, winning its last 16 games en route to the program’s first ACC Championship since 2016. 

Now, nearly three years to the day of the film-session-turned-pep-talk, Bakich and the Tigers find themselves in a similar situation. After starting out the season 15-1 in 2026, Clemson has fallen to a 2-7 record in ACC-play, losing nine of its last 13 games overall.

After a promising beginning and high hopes of hosting a fourth consecutive NCAA Regional Tournament this summer, a turnaround has eluded a Clemson team that held a No. 14 preseason ranking.

Few understand the frustrations, feelings, and pressures of that position quite like members of the 2023 squad. Looking back, Ingle, Taylor, Wright, and two-way player Caden Grice point to three pillars that they believe fueled their turnaround– principles they believe could help the 2026 team do the same.

The first guiding bastion is the importance of player-led leadership.

“Ultimately, it comes down to the leaders in the team,” Taylor, now with the Pittsburgh Pirates organization, said. “It’s not up to the coaches. It’s not up to anybody but the players. I think that we, as players, made a decision.”

The Irmo, S.C., native believes that same accountability will determine the Tigers’ fate this season.

“There is definitely still hope for Clemson, but it’s gonna be ultimately up to the players. I know (Bakich) is going to put a great product on the field, and so it is going to be up to the guys.”

According to Wright, this athlete-led leadership, though essential, is not a one-size-fits-all role. 

“You can’t have a good team with bad leaders,” he said. “You need leaders that are going to lead by example vocally and by their actions. I felt like that team was filled with a lot of good leadership, even guys that weren’t quite labeled as leaders. They played a huge role.”

For the 2023 team, this leadership started developing in the fall, when the Tigers were establishing a core foundation of toughness, togetherness, and tenacity– the second pillar.

“The preparation of the fall and becoming close with everyone on the team regardless of year, age, or experience, making everyone feel welcome, played a big part in what ultimately helped us get over that hump in the middle of the year,” Ingle said. 

That culture extended to every detail– practices, batting practice, conditioning drills, and meetings. Through all facets of preparation, Bakich emphasized consistency, and, at times, what players described as “delusional confidence.

“You don’t really think about how the standards of a program help you down the line, but I feel like all of that success is built on a foundation,” Grice said. “(Bakich) laid out a foundation for us, and when we hit a rough spot, we fell back on that.”

The third, and maybe the most repeated, factor in Clemson’s turnaround, according to former players, lies with the man that came up with the ‘house money’ slogan– the coach that laid a foundation in the fall and wore a mustache in March.

Team 126 members say the third key to their historic run was Coach Bakich himself, and the belief that his teams are “never out of the fight.” This slogan became a central mantra for the 2023 team, and it carried into 2024, when Clemson hosted its first Super Regional Tournament in over a decade. Wright even used the phrase as an anchoring part of his senior speech at the Tigers’ postseason banquet after he concluded his collegiate career.

But long before the mantra, or its sentiment, became public, it was a personal one between Bakich and a struggling player.

“Probably an hour after a loss, I was standing outside the dugout just doing dry swings,” Grice said, reflecting on a tough early-season performance in 2023. “And EB saw me and walked down there. He not only told me that he believed in me, but he told me there was no quit in him or in me. He wasn’t going to give up on me just because I wasn’t playing how I was supposed to. He was with me through it all, and the team was together through it all.”

Years later, the four members of team 126, now all with professional organizations, carry the lessons of adversity, resiliency, and hope with them to four different quadrants of the country. As the former standouts fight through minor league ranks, injuries, and varying successes on a night-to-night basis, they hold fast to never feeling out of the fight– a lesson they all credit to Bakich.

The message is just as relevant for current Tiger players. With nearly 30 games left to play this season, Clemson baseball is far from out of the fight for an ACC Tournament berth or a postseason push. 

 With a 19-10 record, the Tigers may again be playing with house money and, historically, dating back to the Florida State series in 2023, that can be an optimal position.