Erik Bakich talks about creating environment, building culture

After winning a wild marathon of a regional opener against a feisty Lipscomb squad, Clemson head baseball coach Erik Bakich credited the chaotic practice environment he’s implemented for keeping the Tigers level-headed through a roller coaster first several innings on Friday. He said in the postgame that during practice time, he uses all kinds of technology to make the environment absolute pandemonium, whether it’s pumping in music or incredibly loud crowd noise or even using pitching machines that throw better balls than any arms in college.

“What we do is we create an environment for training,” explained Bakich. “We create a training environment that is above game speed. It’s more chaotic than the game, the crowd noise is louder. Even as loud as DKS was, we’ll pump the crowd noise in and do communication team defense, where it’s deafening and you can’t — all you can do is just see each other move, you can’t hear anyone. We’ll turn our machines up to where the breaking balls are better than what we’ll see.”

Bakich wants to induce far more panic and chaos during the practices than they’ll ever see during a game so that the live action actually seems pretty calm versus what the Tigers are used to.

“It’s just creating an environment that is above game speed so that when we do get to the game, it has maybe an opportunity to slow itself down. And it takes a while for that to click in. But I think these guys are just accustomed to training at a very high level so that they are comfortable in all these uncomfortable situations in the game.”

Bakich also pointed out that his team has seen a slew of close finishes already this season, many of which they’ve won. So it’s a battle-tested group that can win big or take care of business in a tight one.

“And the other thing is we’ve had so many repetitions in these nail biters. These one-run close games, playing from a deficit, you know what it’s like, so what? No big deal. It’s just another Friday. It’s going to be a tight game somewhere in the game. And, you know, we’ve just got to the point where I think these guys enjoy that.”