A New Season: Tigers look to get hot in the Clemson Regional

Clemson softball coach John Rittman says he's confident in the team's ability to produce at the plate, and he says they've put in the work this week.

by David Hood - Senior Writer - Fri May 19 07:00:21 GMT-04:00 2023

CLEMSON – It’s a new season for John Rittman and the Clemson softball team.

For the second-consecutive year, Clemson will host an NCAA Regional after being selected as one of the 16 host sites for the 2023 postseason. The Tigers were selected as the No. 16 national seed and will host games at McWhorter Stadium beginning on Friday, May 19.

The Tigers (46-9) were the one seed in the Clemson Regional and are set to face UNC Greensboro (37-20) in their opening game of the double-elimination regional at 3 p.m. (ESPNU). The Auburn Tigers (40-17) will play Cal State Fullerton (33-19) as the number two and three seeds in the regional at McWhorter Stadium (approx. 5:30 p.m. on ESPN+).

After starting the season 37-1, Clemson has lost eight of its last 17 games, including the team’s most recent game in the ACC Championship semifinals when the Tigers got no-hit by Duke. Over the last five games, Clemson (46-9, 18-6 ACC) has averaged just 2.4 runs and 5.4 hits.

However, Rittman said the Tigers have turned the page and looking at the tournament as a different season.

“It’s a new season. It’s regionals and postseason. I think certainly we’ve had a rough month in, and we responded a little bit last week,” Rittman told TigerNet Thursday. “I like the way we’ve come to work this week. We did some things differently offensively; we did some different drills and put them in different situations.”

The winner of the Clemson Regional will advance to a best-of-three NCAA Super Regional against the winner of the Norman Regional between May 25-28. The Women’s College World Series will be playing in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, June 1-9.

“It’s always interesting when you make the postseason and you get to see the road that lies ahead of you, and certainly we have a very daunting task in front of us; there are some very tough opponents,” Rittman said. “We’ve preached this all along; to get where we want to go, we’re going to have to beat some really good teams, and this weekend is no different. But I really think our team has this fresh, new start. Everybody is 0-0, and we’re looking forward to a great postseason run.”

Rittman said Clemson has to make better decisions at the plate.

“There’s no question offensively that we have to do a better job,” Rittman said. “We’ve got to a better job of getting runners on and having timely hits. But I think in our individual approaches, we’ve got to be aggressive early in the counts, and we’ve got to compete better. Hitting is a lot of timing and pitch selection.

“In the last month, we haven’t made great decisions, but it starts with our timing, pitch selection and making good decisions. I’m very confident in our abilities, and I know our team has worked really hard to come out and be better offensively this weekend.”