Clemson Hitting ‘Reset’ Button On Season
By: Jason Priester April 22, 2026

CLEMSON — At some point before Tuesday night’s 7-2 win over USC-Upstate, the Clemson baseball team decided it was going to reset its season.

Coming off another excruciating road series loss at Virginia, Erik Bakich and his team thought this was the best approach for a season that has just not gone as planned.

For first baseman Luke Gaffney, that mindset paid off in Tuesday’s midweek win, as the junior hit his third homer in the past four games and tied a career-high with five runs driven in.

“We restarted the season, so we are treating it 1-0 and just looking to build off that,” Gaffney said after the USC-Upstate win. “Just playing Clemson baseball. I think we did that today and just looking to continue it.”

While Bakich did not want to get into specifics about the reset, the head coach did note it was something the team decided to do while at his home. He wants his players focused on the next game instead of harping on what might have been or where they are in the standings.

“It is just something we did as a team,” Bakich said. “We are just moving forward. That is all you can do. We can’t do anything about all the games that we let slip away, or we had the lead late, or we were one hit away — there is nothing we can do about that now. All we can do is control our mindset and how we attack each day and each game and each training session.”

“I think we are in a really good spot in terms of that. We may not be in a good spot in terms of looking at the conference standings but we are where we are and all we can do is move forward and make the most of it We will look up in a month and see where everything settles.”

With the Tigers currently sitting near the bottom of the ACC standings, the team’s postseason hopes have taken a major hit, and if anything is to be done about that, it has to start this weekend at Louisville.

“We are not really focused on that right now,” Gaffney said. “Just focused on what is ahead and that is Friday night at Louisville. Just going to bring everything that we’ve got and try stack days, as many as we can.”