Staying alive: Youngsters push Tigers to victory over UNCG, stave off elimination

With its season on the line in Clemson’s first elimination game Sunday, the Tigers received huge contributions from some of its youngest players in a 6-3 win over UNC Greensboro.

Shortstop Logan Davidson hit a two-run home run in the top of the seventh inning to give Clemson its first lead of the night and finished with three RBIs. Owen Griffith pitched the final 4 1/3 scoreless innings in relief. Catcher Kyle Wilkie recorded a career-high three hits and scored two runs.

All are freshmen, and sophomore Seth Beer chipped in with a solo home run to help send Clemson (41-20) into another elimination game against Vanderbilt that started at 9:50 p.m. Sunday (ESPN2).

“How about the job of Owen Griffith? He saved us right there,” Clemson coach Monte Lee said. “He was unbelievable. Brought him up early in the ball game, and he pitched an outstanding ballgame, threw up zero after zero after zero. Even with some adversity there in the eighth inning, he pitched his way out of it.”

After a weather delay forced the Tigers’ first game of the day to start four hours and 50 minutes after the originally scheduled start time, they fell behind 3-0 to the Spartans (36-24), who went home after going 1-2 in regional play.

“We got really good production from the bottom of the order,” Lee said. “Wilkie had a great game offensively. Jordan Greene did some little things, moved a runner over. But the story for me was really Owen Griffith. He kept our season going.”

Clemson starting pitcher Pat Krall lasted 4 2/3 innings and allowed three runs (one earned) on five hits with no strikeouts and one walk.

But it was Griffith (1-2) who gave up just one hit and worked out of an eighth-inning jam to star on the mound. Lee had no reservations about putting a freshman on the mound in a big situation and called him the “best arm sitting in the bullpen.”

“All those guys that are leaving, I just didn’t want it to be their last game at the Doug,” said Griffith, who had five strikeouts and allowed one walk. “I wasn’t nervous at all. I knew what I had to do. I had one focus and that was to get them out. And that’s what I did.”

UNCG took advantage of an error by Beer in right field to eventually plate three runs off Krall. Ben Spitznagel and Andrew Moritz each had RBI hits in the frame.

Clemson got on the board in the fourth when Beer launched his 16^th home run of the season over the center-field wall to cut the lead to 3-1.

The Tigers got within a run in the fifth on an RBI sac fly by Reed Rohlman to set up Davidson’s big blast off the roof of the indoor batting cages in right field in the seventh.

“That was the biggest change in the momentum of the game,” Griffith said. “After that home run, everybody knew we weren’t going to lose this game.”

Clemson added another run in the frame when Rohlman scored from third on a wild pitch.

Davidson picked up his third RBI of the game on a sac fly in the eighth.

For Game 2 Sunday night, Lee went with midweek starter Tyler Jackson on the mound in the rematch with Vanderbilt, which beat Clemson 9-4 on Saturday night.

Check back for results of that late-night game later.

This story was originally published June 4, 2017 at 8:57 PM with the headline "Staying alive: Youngsters push Tigers to victory over UNCG, stave off elimination."