Clemson senior infielder and captain Blake Wright earned the dual honors of D1Baseball’s National Player of the Week in addition to ACC Player of the Week on March 25.
“It’s truly an honor to be named national player-of-the-week. None is possible without God, family, coaches and my teammates,” Wright said.
Wright had a 13-for-22 (.591) batting line with two walks, a 1.409 slugging percentage, a .625 on-base percentage, six home runs and 21 RBIs — good for the country’s best in the latter two categories.
This season, he holds the record for the most RBIs in a single week by any Division I player.
Wright played a vital role in the Tigers’ flawless 5-0 week, including a sweep of No. 7 Florida State. The Seminole series was an electric back-and-forth as the Tigers won by a run-rule victory in the first game, a seven-run comeback win in the ninth inning in the second game and a nine-run comeback victory in the finale.
The captain was a huge part of game two’s ninth-inning rally thanks to a score-tying grand slam to lead the comeback. He repeated his heroics against the Seminoles one day later by crushing a two-out grand slam to give Clemson a 13-11 lead late. Wright went 6-for-14 with 10 RBIs in his three games versus Florida State, including three home runs.
When asked what was going through his mind during the back-to-back comebacks that helped make him such a significant impact, he spoke about the team’s “Never out of the fight” mentality.
“Our team has a ‘Never out of the fight’ mentality, so we knew that a comeback was always possible,” Wright said. “My objective was to get on base and keep the rally going. We have a very tough team that can throw a big punch any time in the game.”
This past weekend, the Tigers defeated the Miami Hurricanes 2-1 in their weekend series. Although Wright did not have a standout weekend, he was still valuable throughout the series as he scored two runs and picked up one hit and one walk.
Looking ahead, Wright plans to maintain this level of performance and continue his work as a pivotal contributor to his team.
“The plan is to stick with the same mindset and approach. Consistency means staying steady, not getting too high or low,” he said. “As we say in our program, we must focus on sticking to the 20-mile march. This simply means taking one game, one at-bat and one pitch at a time.”
