CLEMSON — Imagine being dressed in full football gear, wearing a helmet and working in the middle of a practice field at high noon. Now imagine the temperature is 96 degrees and, with the humidity, it feels like 102 degrees and the sun is beating down on you.

These were the conditions the Clemson Football team practiced in Friday at the Jervey Meadows fields behind Doug Kingsmore and McWhorter Stadiums. The word circulating around the football facilities was it was the worst of the team’s eight practices thus far.

“It’s an adjustment,” defensive tackle Markus Strong said afterwards. “Like a lot of people come from all over (the country). Not everybody is used to this weather. So, it’s like you come in and it’s gonna hit you. It’s a mental thing.”

The hot weather, followed by a grueling practice, is just what the doctor order for Clemson. The Tigers will likely be in even worst temperatures when they kickoff the season in Baton Rouge, La., on Sept. 5 against LSU.

Though the temperature was the same in Baton Rouge on Friday, the heat index there was 109.

“It’s a mental thing you got to just push yourself through,” Strong said. “But yeah, going out there on Jervey, it’s like you say, it’s not like you are at home and you feel comfortable. It’s easy, but when you go over there, it’s uncomfortable. It’s just one of them things. It’s like all right. ‘I’m going to push myself through it.’

“I know it’s hot but that’s the beauty of it. So, we got to fight through it every day. Even though it is hard. It’s not easy.”

Neither is playing at LSU, and that is what Dabo Swinney, and his coaches are trying to prepare their players for.

“Honestly, I’ve only heard stories, I’ve never been in Baton Rouge. I know it’s probably going to be hot and humid down there,” Strong said. “But being out there in the sun, just feeling it the whole time, you got to tell yourself, like all right, ‘I got to keep going.’ Like everybody knows it’s hot, everybody is going to feel it, but everybody else around the world is doing the same thing right now. So, it’s who going to win this battle right now, today.”

Strong and the defense will try to win the battle on Saturday, when the Tigers scrimmage for the first time in this year’s camp. Clemson will have a closed scrimmage at Memorial Stadium on Saturday morning.

“How are they retaining the knowledge of all the things that we put in? It’s their job to put it on tape and make us play them,” Swinney said. “I mean, demonstrate that they know what they’re doing, and they can do it with the type of effort, physicality, technique and fundamentals that wins.

“So, everybody gets evaluated. Again, sometimes a play is bad because somebody screwed up. You’re grading a receiver and he ran a great route, but he didn’t get the ball. The quarterback got sacked, whatever. You’re grading him on everything. He busted, a ball didn’t come to him, went to the other side or whatever, but he busted.”