CLEMSON – The postseason starts now for the Clemson softball team.
The Tigers, who finished the regular season last week, learned on Sunday they will be the No. 7 seed in this week’s ACC Tournament, which will be played at Palmer Park in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Clemson will take on No. 10 seed North Carolina on Wednesday at 5 p.m., in the first round.
“We just have to go out and play softball,” Clemson head coach John Rittman said. “We have been playing really well the last three weeks.”
The Tigers (32-19, 13-11 ACC) won seven of their last 11 games, including four wins over ranked opponents, Virginia and Duke. They have 10 victories over ranked opponents, the most in the program’s young history.
“We are a team that can be very dangerous,” Rittman said. “We are peaking at the right time, and we are putting it all together.
“It has been a journey this year. We played very inconsistent through the first half of the season and got into a really tough part of our schedule and tried to find ourselves.”
Clemson has found itself at the right time. Though players Jamison Brockenbrough, Sarah Breaux, Kiley Channell and Marian Collins have been solid all year, recently Macey Cintron, Taylor Pipkins and Kyle Johnson have stepped up and provided the Tigers with more power and consistent hitting in the lineup.
Cintron has also provided some depth in the circle, taking some of the pressure off Sierra Maness and Abby Dunning.
“We had our ups and downs, but that is what softball is,” Maness said. “Just to know that (we) stayed together through the whole year… We are just going to continue it.”
The Tigers are currently ranked No. 23 in the latest RPI rankings released by the NCAA, meaning it is going to be tough for them to host a regional unless they win the ACC Tournament, which is what they did last year.
If they beat UNC in the first round, they will take on No. 2 seed Duke (11th in RPI) in the quarterfinals and if they win that they could see No. 3 seed Virginia Tech (20th) in the semifinals and possibly No. 1 seed Florida State (13th) in the finals.
“It is all about taking it one game at a time from here on out,” said Pipkins, who was the ACC Tournament MVP last year. “You try not to set your sights too far out because you have to take it inning by inning and game by game because that is the key to success going forward.
“Don’t look forward, stay in the moment.”