After sweep, UCF baseball trolls Clemson by running down hill at football stadium

After sweeping the Clemson baseball team this weekend, Central Florida decided to celebrate its win in style — football style, to be specific.

UCF’s team made the short trip from Doug Kingsmore Stadium to Memorial Stadium and, in a direct parody of the football’s team entrance for home games, ran down the hill in the east end zone, according to a TikTok posted by outfielder John Rhys Plumlee.

“We heard when you sweep Clemson you get to run the hill,” Plumlee, also the starting quarterback on UCF’s football team, wrote Sunday afternoon.

Outside of a 16-game stretch in the early 1970s, Clemson’s football team has run down the hill ahead of every home game since 1942 (428 times entering 2023), per the school. ESPN announcer Chris Fowler described it as “perhaps the greatest entrance in sports” in 2016.

UCF’s hill run video, which drew the ire of many Clemson fans on Twitter, was the latest development in an eventful weekend baseball series.

The Knights beat Clemson 4-2 on Friday, 10-7 on Saturday and 13-6 on Sunday to become the first non-ACC team to sweep a three-game series at Clemson since 1985, per the school.

After Sunday’s loss, first-year Clemson baseball coach Erik Bakich described the weekend sweep as “disappointing” for the Tigers, who were 4-0 with an opening weekend sweep of Binghamton and midweek win over Charlotte entering the UCF series.

Bakich also described UCF as “mouthy.”

“It sucks right now and leaves a very bitter taste in our mouth, especially with a team that’s very mouthy in the way they celebrate on our own field,” he said. “So that’s double tough. But we are going to find a way to be better, and we will be better for this in the long run.”

After Sunday’s win, UCF posted a Twitter graphic of its coach, Greg Lovelady, posing with a tiger and captioned it “The new Tiger King” — a play on the Netflix hit documentary series “Tiger King” and, of course, Clemson’s mascot.

Clemson (4-3) plays USC Upstate on Tuesday in a neutral-site game at Greenville’s Fluor Field before playing its annual rivalry series against No. 23 South Carolina.

The Tigers host the Gamecocks Friday in Clemson (6 p.m., ACC Network Extra) before the teams play Saturday at Fluor Field (1 p.m., SEC Network Extra) and Sunday at USC’s Founder Park (1:30 p.m., SEC Network Extra).