Clemson Prepares For Regional Opener With Liberty

COLUMBIA, S.C. (WOLO) — The Clemson baseball team shared their thoughts Thursday on their NCAA Regional opener against Liberty. The Tigers will face Liberty on Friday at 1 p.m. at Carolina Stadium. Clemson Head Baseball Coach Jack Leggett: “We’re just excited to be here, excited to play some more baseball. It’s always an exciting time of year to play when you are playing in the tournament. We’ve got four good teams in the tournament. We obviously hope to play all three at some point. I am excited about our team. We are going to play like we can play and hopefully the chips will fall in the right place for us. I’m excited for the opportunity we have.” “The North Carolina series was the series where I saw my team grow up. We won 11 in a row after that and have really played well since that day. That might have been a turning point for us. These freshman are very mature and very hungry. They have worked hard for everything they have. I like their attitude. We have all matured as a team. We have played in some very tough ball games.” “I would honestly hope that’s (Pressure to put teams together in the same regional for better TV ratings) not the case. If that were the case I’d be disappointed. This tournament is supposed to be 10 people sitting in a room figuring out the fairest way to figure out who the national champion should be, what’s the fairest way to get the best teams to Omaha. So I would be disappointed and I hope that is not the case.” Catcher Ben Boulware: “Last year my job was to support the team. I got a few at-bats every once and a while. This year I’m the catcher and hopefully I will do my job well.” “We don’t want to overlook them (Liberty). They are a good team. We are just trying to focus on them because we know they can beat us if we don’t play as well a we can.” Outfielder Thomas Brittle: “I think we are definitely past our play in the ACC Tournament. The past is the past. We took the positives from last week and we flushed out the negatives. That’s what makes the good teams because baseball is a game of failures.” “We had a lot of freshman start at the beginning of the year. Even now we still have a lot of freshman, but the biggest thing is they’ve grown and matured a lot over the year. They’ve been great contributors this year and we are looking for big things out of them this weekend.”