By Will Vandervort.

Being the ace of Clemson’s pitching staff is no pressure. At least that is the way Matthew Crownover sees it.

The Tigers’ junior will more than likely take the mound for Clemson when it opens the season on Feb. 13 against West Virginia at Doug Kingsmore Stadium. The last two year’s Crownover has primarily worked as the Tigers’ No. 2 guy in the rotation, though he did start the last half last season as the Friday starter.

“(Daniel Gossett) was our guy last year, but I pitched a lot on Friday nights because of his shoulder and we kept it the way because he was pitching well when he came back. It seemed to work so we did not want to mess with it too much,” Crownover said.

The lefty was not too bad either.

Crownover finished the year with a 2.80 ERA, while compiling eight victories. He also recorded 90 strikeouts in 99.1 innings pitched. He has pitched in big games, too, whether it was against rival South Carolina, Florida State, the ACC Tournament or the NCAA Tournament.

“People say it might be pressure (to be the ace), but you come here to pitch in big games,” Crownover said.

With Gossett now pitching in the Oakland A’s organization, Clemson’s new ace says his goal isn’t to blow past people and put up huge numbers, instead he just wants to pitch in a way where he is always one step ahead of the batter.

“I will try to make minimal adjustments so it gives us a better chance to win,” he said. “I think we are going to better offensively this year. We really weren’t bad last year, but we did not get as many big hits as we would have liked. Hopefully, our execution is better. I plan to execute better as a pitcher and our bullpen will execute better. I think we have a better bullpen this year so maybe that will help us out.”

The Tigers bullpen this year could have as many as seven lefties, a big leap from a year ago when by the end of the season there was only one left-handed pitcher coming out of the bullpen, who just happened to also be a starter.

“We only had three lefties and Alex Bostic was dealing with elbow soreness and Zack (Erwin) was doing pretty much everything. Sometimes he would start and sometimes he would come along in relief so we really did not have any lefty options.

“We tried to make some righties a lefty specialist. If they threw a good change up. That works to a certain extent, but you were like, ‘Come on now, can’t we have one lefty!”

Crownover says the Tigers now have lefty options in guys like Charlie Barnes, Pat Krall, Alex Schnell and Hunter Van Vorn to come out of the bullpen.

“We have people that can throw a breaking ball to a lefty,” Crownover said. “It’s exciting.”

And it takes off a little pressure, too.