You never know what is going to motivate a player or a team. For 14th-ranked Clemson on Friday, it was a gesture by South Alabama pitcher Drake Nightengale that got the Tigers going.
After Bryce Teodosio flied out to left field to end the fourth inning, Nightengale looked over at the Clemson dugout and gave the Tigers a throat-slashing gesture just before he walked off the mound. Most of the 4,435 fans at Doug Kingsmore Stadium in Clemson did not catch it. But the Tigers did.
“There was a little bit of trash talking going on at the beginning. I think, we are the wrong team to do that to,” shortstop Logan Davidson said after the Tigers’ 6-2 victory. “We are going to respond to that, which we did with the bats.”
In the Tigers’ next at-bat, they ended the Jaguars’ trash talking when Davidson took a 1-0 offering from reliever Jared Proctor and sent it over the left field wall with two runners on base. That gave Clemson a 3-2 lead in the bottom of the fifth inning and they never looked back.
“I have hit quite a few homers here, and that was the best one,” Davidson said.
The home run got the Tigers going. Michael Green later hit a solo homer in the bottom the seventh inning, and then Sam Hall drove in two runs with two outs in the bottom of the eighth inning to finish the Jaguars off.
“I think we are one of the bigger series they are going to have this year, so they are going to come with a chip on their shoulder. We are kind of expecting that,” Davidson said. “We know they are a blue-collar team coming in and we are going to have to play the same way. I mean we are blue collar as well.
“So, we are going to fight head to head, and we won tonight.”
Clemson will host South Alabama at 1 p.m. Saturday in a doubleheader. The second game will start about an hour after the conclusion of the first game.