CLEMSON — There is no doubt the Clemson baseball team is struggling.

After falling at home to Duke on Saturday, the ninth-ranked Tigers have lost five of seven. During the current skid, Erik Bakich has seen his team struggle in all phases. There have been times when the hitting has faltered. Other times, it’s the starting pitching. The head coach has also seen his bullpen, which has been a strength much of the season, have its share of issues of late.

‘We are still trying to get out of our funk,” Bakich said. “It’s not going to be smooth, it is not going to be a straight line.”

On Saturday, it was a combination of it all, the hitting, the pitching and even the fielding. While the Tigers did score 10 runs, Bakich watched on as his hitters struck out a whopping 15 times. Clemson currently has more strikeouts than any team in the ACC. The offense stranded nine base runners, and once had the bases loaded with just one out, but could not score.

His pitchers didn’t fare much better. Seven different hurlers combined to walk 11 Duke hitters and hit three more in the 15-10 loss. Starter Drew Titsworth lasted just three innings, allowing four runs on six hits. He was responsible for two of the walks. Joe Allen walked three consecutive at one point, while Talan Bell and Jacob McGovern each walked two.

However, the biggest blow came in the seventh, with Clemson up 6-5. A fielding error by Jarren Purify on a routine ground ball led to Duke scoring 10 unearned runs in the inning.

“We struck out 15 times offensively, we gave them 14 free passes,” Bakich said. “They had eight runners reach base with two outs in their 10-run inning. Just can’t do that. I really thought that inning was a complete meltdown.”

Despite the results of the past couple of weeks, Bakich still sees a lot of potential in his team. And he still believes his team can get back on track. Right now, he sees players that are pressing, which is leading to mistakes.

“It’s not who we are, and it’s not how we want to be,” Bakich said. “Just got to get back to the things that make us, us. That is when we are not only playing hard and competing hard, but it looks like the guys are having the time of their lives out there. Playing mentally free.”

“You can’t play this game with a tight ass, you just can’t. There are times lately where we are just clinched up. You are not going to clinch championships and achieve awesome things in sports when you play clinched. Big difference between those two words, even though they sound the same.”

With just four games remaining in the regular season, time is running short. Clemson is still No. 9 in the RPI, meaning there is still an outside shot at earning a national seed. Even if that proves to be out of reach at this point, the Tigers need to string together some wins just to ensure they host during the regional round. And Bakich firmly believes that is exactly what this team is going to do.

“We’ll get it, though,” Bakich said. “We just got to fight our way through it. We’re going to get hot. We’re going to get hot. We’re going to make our run, and it is going to be awesome. It will be epic. This is just part of our journey, part of our story. We didn’t come here for some of it, we came here for all of it.”