Shortstop Grant Smith (UK Athletics Photo)
When Kentucky beat Vanderbilt Friday it clinched no worse than a share of the Southeastern Conference championship for the Wildcats and coach Nick Mingione wanted his players to celebrate and enjoy the moment.
Never mind that if UK lost Saturday — which it did — that UK likely would only share the title instead of being the outright champion. Mingione knew his players deserved to celebrate immediately after a 22nd SEC win made sure they would be at least SEC co-champion.
“Having been in this league for 18 year, I know the difficulty and power of it,” Mingione said on WLAP Sunday Morning Sports Talk. “Fourteen of the past 15 national champions have come out of this league. Some believe it is harder to win the conference than the national title.”
The USA Today final regular-season coaches’ poll had Tennessee, Arkansas, Kentucky and Texas A&M ranked 1-4 and Georgia No. 8.
“I don’t care if you are co-champion or outright champion, the last word — champion — is what matters,” the UK coach said. “Before the series (with Vanderbilt) I told our players our magic number was two and if we win two games we are SEC champions and whenever that time comes we are going to enjoy it.
“We ended up celebrating and letting them have that moment to be a champion. I just felt like they deserved that.”
Kentucky will open SEC Tournament play Wednesday in Hoover, Ala.
2 Responses
It looks like the bat Cats celebrated too soon. They were murdered by LSU and now have to win out to take the tourney. Maybe the lights are too bright for a team who is not used to being in the spotlight.
Or maybe he was just resting a few key players to get ready for NCAA