Nick Lopez will be hoping for happy times in NCAA Tournament play. (UK Athletics Photo)
Kentucky now will have a week between games when it starts NCAA Tournament play in Lexington this week after losing 6-5 to South Carolina Friday in the Southeastern Conference Tournament.
Kentucky should easily be a national seed hosting a regional and then a super regional if it advances out of the region.
Kentucky coach Nick Mingione was asked what he felt good about going into the NCAA after Friday’s loss as well as things he thought his team needed to work on before starting NCAA play.
“One thing I’m looking forward to for the guys is to be able to get some rest. This has been a super long season, and you’ve seen how many road games we’ve played,” said Mingione.
“We’ve had one flight — no, we’ve had two flights. Every other one I feel like is a six-, eight-hour bus trip. I’m looking forward to them being able to spend some quality days in their own bed. That’s always a good thing.”
Okay, rest is a good thing as UK awaits to find out Monday afternoon who it will be hosting in the NCAA regional. But what has to get better for UK to be able to have a chance to make the College World Series next month?
“We’ve got to be able to get to the spot where we continue to have our pitchers just focus on their quality pitches, and we are on the attack,” Mingione said. “Our opponents feel that.
“Then offensively, we have to continue to do a good job with two strikes, and I think we can do better. I think this tournament we did not do as well as I would like. As a matter of fact, I don’t think we met the standard maybe one time with two strikes.
“We’ve got to get in there and do a little better job with two strikes. We’ve got to tighten up some of our baserunning, our base stealing, and all the little trick plays and gadgets. We’ve just got to tighten all that up because when we’re doing that, that’s us at our best.”
