Jack Leggett's relentless challenge designed to hone Tigers to fine edge

As usual, there aren’t many soft spots on Clemson’s baseball schedule.

And while it might seem tempting to conserve selectively, and perhaps dial back the level of competition in games other than the high-stake weekend clashes of the perennially-rugged ACC, that’s never been Coach Jack Leggett’s approach.

In fact, it’s a time-honored tradition, and a good indication of Leggett’s competitive ethos, that the non-conference and midweek games be as challenging as possible.

With that still being the case for the non-ACC slate in 2012, the Tigers get things started on Feb. 17-19 by hosting a season-opening three-game series with Alabama-Birmingham. That’s followed by another pre-conference three-game weekend home series (Feb. 24-26) with the University of Maine, which is Leggett’s alma mater and where he enjoyed standout playing careers in both baseball and football.

“We start off with the University of Alabama-Birmingham,” said Leggett. “We played them a few years back, and they’re well-coached, with Brian Shoop as their head coach, and (former Mississippi State and Georgia coach) Ron Polk as their volunteer assistant coach. Then we play the University of Maine the next week, and they have several players who have played in the Cape Cod League. They have some good arms and will be a good challenge for us.”

After that, the Tigers will meet arch-rival and two-time-defending national champion South Carolina (Mar. 2-4) in the single regular-season three-game series set-up that features a game at each home site, and the third at a neutral site.

The new wrinkle in that arrangement is that for the first time since the inception of the single series format, the neutral game is being transplanted from the Upstate (Greenville’s Fluor Field) to the Lowcountry.

“The next week we go down to Charleston and play South Carolina on Friday,” said Leggett. “Then we play a Saturday game in Columbia, and a Sunday game up here to make up the three-game series.”

After the Tigers host North Carolina (Mar. 9-11) in a face-off of division-favorites that gets the ACC-grind underway, the midweek games pick up, and, again, reflect Leggett’s contention that a routine diet of strong competition will enhance rather than detract from his team’s performances in those all-important weekend series.

“Later on in our non-conference schedule, we’ve still got Georgia twice, and we’ve got Elon twice,” said Leggett. “We’ve also got Western Carolina twice, and we have Furman and Wofford.

“It’s a good midweek schedule, and we’ve got College of Charleston for three games during our bye-week after exams. They were a good team last year, one of the strongest teams in the region.

“So it never stops. Every time you turn around, you’ve got somebody who’s capable of beating you. There’s always some great competition, and, whether it’s four days a week or five days a week, our job is to try and be ready to play every single day.”