After a midweek off for final exams, the final three-week stretch of the Florida State baseball season begins this weekend in Tallahassee.

The No. 5 Seminoles (31-9, 12-6 ACC) host No. 3 Clemson (36-10, 13-8) for a three-game series at Dick Howser Stadium, which begins Friday at 6 p.m.

While FSU is coming off a series loss to Louisville, it still enters the weekend as the projected No. 3 overall seed for the NCAA Tournament according to D1Baseball. That is, in large part, because FSU hosts Clemson and North Carolina — the two other teams currently projected as top-eight overall seeds — at Howser over the final three weeks of the regular season.

"Late in the year, it's very advantageous to play at home. These weekends are critical that we get more down the stretch and we understand that..." FSU assistant coach Brad Vanderglas said Thursday. "We've done an unbelievable job building the atmosphere, bringing the energy each time we've been at home. Obviously haven't had a home weekend here in a little while. It being graduation weekend, they're dialing up the Marching Chiefs (for Friday's game)...

"I know (FSU director of program development) Randy Burdette and his team of people have been working on these last few weekends for many, many weeks, just making sure that the crowd is engaged, ready to roll, and the guys feed off it. Make no mistake, our guys love playing at home. It's fun for the hitters, kind of hearing that crowd noise, the pitchers get dialed up after a big moment."

Clemson was among the last teams nationally that hadn't lost a weekend series entering last week. However, the Tigers head to Tallahassee coming off being swept at NC State by a combined score of 26-7.

That dropped Clemson from first in the ACC standings to fifth entering the FSU series. The Seminoles are second in the ACC standings behind the Wolfpack.

While FSU ace Jamie Arnold was excellent last Friday at Louisville (career-high 7.2 innings pitched, season-high 11 strikeouts, two runs on six hits), the rest of the FSU pitching staff again struggled in the final two games of the series. Louisville tagged FSU's pitchers for 23 runs over the final two games, with the bullpen allowing 14 of those runs (all earned) over five innings for a gaudy ERA of 25.20.

FSU pitching coach Micah Posey talked Thursday about the bullpen's occasional struggles in ACC play and what he considers the biggest issues.

"The lows have been really low. We're not losing 5-4 games or 6-4. Whenever we're losing, we seem to be losing big. The biggest thing is as a reliever, when you put a guy in the game, you want to see him get that first guy (out)," Posey said. "You're bringing them in to get that first guy, and I don't know how successful we've been at that. It seems to take us two or three hitters to get adjusted, and then when you get adjusted, there might be a cheap hit or a big hit that seems to put up the crooked number. The biggest thing we're looking for is their ability to come in and get the first guy out and be fast starters As a reliever, you're not like a starter. You don't have the luxury of starting slow. We want to see them start fast."

While Clemson has won games at a high rate this season, its offensive numbers don't blow you away. The Tigers rank 12th in the ACC in batting average (.272), 10th in home runs (54), 12th in slugging percentage (.443). However, Clemson does rank sixth in the conference in on-base percentage (.410) because it ranks third in the ACC in walks (281).

"I think this lineup does a good job of working like as a tandem, as one unit. They do a good job of working at bats, walking, hit-by-pitch seems to be a big part of their game," Posey said. "They've got some guys that can drive the ball of the ballpark, but it seems to me that they kind of hand at-bats off to each other, and they put together a bunch of quality at-bats in a row."

Here's a statistical comparison of FSU and Clemson entering this top-five series at Howser.

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