Lee's Decision to 'Stick With' His Guys Pays Off as Mack Anglin Delivers Big Against Wolfpack

Clemson crushed NC State on Friday 14-3 behind a dominating start from junior pitcher Mack Anglin.

CLEMSON, S.C.- With NC State in town this weekend, the Tigers very much needed a quality start from Mack Anglin in the series opener.

The junior right-hander had been fairly dominant over his first four starts of the season, picking up three wins and sporting a 1.71 ERA. However, over his next two starts, both losses and both against ACC competition, Anglin struggled with his command, walking 10 batters in just 6.2 innings pitched, and getting tagged for 10 earned runs.

Having lost four of its first five games in ACC play, Clemson desperately needed a bounceback performance from Anglin on Friday night, and the hard-throwing junior delivered in the Tigers' 14-3 win over the Wolfpack.

"It was all dependant upon Mack's start," head coach Monte Lee said. "When Mack's good, we're good. And I think that was it was obviously critical. We're coming off of back-to-back tough starts on Fridays, and we needed Mack to give us a good start and get us deep into the ball game. And I think I think our whole team knows that when he's good, we're pretty dang good. And he was good for us (Friday)."

After allowing two of the first three hitters to reach, one of those by walk, Anglin settled in, striking out the final two batters of the frame and escaping the early jam. He would go on to throw five scoreless innings, allowing just three hits, while striking out eight, in picking up his fourth win of the season.

While Anglin did walk three batters, his command was much better on Friday, particularly with his fastball, and his head coach could tell very early on.

"Found the strike zone," Lee said. Just thought he did a good job. Today he was more down than he's been, he located down and away a lot. He was executing his fastball at the bottom of the strike zone, and he threw his fastball a lot. So I think that was the biggest difference, just the command of the fastball. You could tell early in the game that you know that he was dialed in pretty good."

Anglin isn't the only Clemson starter to experience some adversity over the past couple of weeks, as Nick Clayton and Nick Hoffman have also had some bumps in the road since the beginning of ACC play. Hoffman lasted just 2.2 innings in his last start against Pitt, allowing six runs on nine hits.

However, Lee is confident that the right guys are starting and currently has no plans to make any tweaks to the rotation.

"We're gonna stick with our guys," Lee said. "I think we've got to send that message to our players that we trust them and that we're going to stick with them and that was the message this week by going with the same rotation."

Despite having lost seven of ten coming into the weekend after a 14-0 start, the head coach was determined not to make any changes based on a knee-jerk reaction. Instead, Lee and the rest of the coaching staff chose to believe in his players, and on Friday night, it was a decision that paid off big for the Tigers.

"Sometimes it's very easy, you know, when all the outside noise starts to come in, it's very easy to want to change things up because you're not getting the performances that you're looking for," Lee said. "But when you believe in a player, you need to show him that you believe in a player, and that's really the message."

The Tigers' odds of winning the CWS currently sit at +8000, according to Fanduel.

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