Vicky Graff Photo
Kentucky had an 8-0 lead after five innings against Western Michigan in Friday’s NCAA Tournament regional opener in Lexington and looked on its way to an easy win. However, Western Michigan scored five times in the fifth and three times in the eighth and Kentucky had to hang on to win 10-8.
The Cats (41-14) advanced to tonight’s winner’s bracket final but needed some heroics from relief pitcher Robert Hogan. He had 3 1/3 scoreless innings to end the game and left the bases loaded in the ninth inning to secure the win.
Almost 6,000 fans came to Kentucky Proud Park to watch coach Nick Mingione’s team pursue its first ever trip to the College World Series.
“When they opened the gates about 90 minutes before, just to watch our fans, like, just rush to get to their spots, it was a surreal feeling,” Mingione said. “I’ve been at another place where it’s been like that, but we hadn’t had that yet.
“So I, first off, want to thank our fans for showing up in the sun, in the heat. They showed up. It was 90 minutes, I believe. It was 90 minutes before the game and they were waiting to sit there. They waited an hour and a half until the game’s even started.
“And then they sat through, how long was that game? Somebody help me. Three and a half almost, three and a half? So our fans, they sat there for five hours. So just super thankful to them.”
Mingione said blowing most of an 8-0 lead and then having to fight to win is a scenario Kentucky experienced often during the season.
“Was it intense in every play? Absolutely, but we’ve been in those games for 15 weeks. So this is the 16th week of it. So I thought our guys absolutely responded,” Mingione said. “I thought a big moment in the game was in the fifth. They score five and then we immediately score two. And I thought that was the difference in the game. They immediately score five and we answer back with two. I thought that was big.”
Catcher Devin Burkes had two hits, walked twice and scored twice. He also had 10 putouts.
“The guy is just clutch. Had four key blocks. Kept the game in front of him the entire time. Every one of those blocks saved us a base which ultimately saved us a run,” Mingione said. “I thought his leadership was fantastic. His verbal and nonverbal behind the plate is absolutely crucial. And there’s a reason why we bat him in the 3 hole. I think you can look at stats and other things, but that guy is as tough and as clutch as anybody in our program.
“So he was 5-for-5 today quality at-bats, 5-for-5, every at-bat he did something positive for Kentucky. I thought that was good. And I thought the production up and down our lineup was crucial. I talked about our pitching. I mentioned some of our defense. But we had seven different guys that had an RBI, seven. And if you look at what our 7, 8, 9 guys did. They scored five of our 10 runs between those guys.
“So I think anytime you have that kind of production up and down the lineup, it obviously makes us hard to beat. And we were able to do it all. We hit bunts, bombs, ran the bases, stole bases, got thrown out a couple times being aggressive but we were on the full-on attack. We drew walks, got hit by pitches and hit on a lot of cylinders offensively.”
Kentucky has never been to a College World Series. It lost to host LSU in the Super Regional last year and LSU went on to win the national title. If UK can win the region, it will host a Super Regional next week.
“I’ve learned a lot as a coach. I haven’t been perfect. But the one thing I will say is that as our program has continued to try to climb and make adjustments and get better, our fans have done the same thing. And you can just see, year after year, you can just see it building, from the end of ’22 to last year, to this year,” the UK coach said. “I just want to compliment this team — you’ve heard me say this a lot — they’re so good at moving on to the next thing.
“You’ve heard us say how this win will expire at midnight and it will. They move on immediately. And that’s how we look up, at one point we’re 15-1 in the league. This is incredible. How are you able to do that? If I told our team we better go 15-1 at the beginning of the year, they’re going, ‘Coach, you’re crazy.’ They literally have taken each game and they move on and they say next and it’s a new day — win or lose, next, next, next.
“Ultimately it’s a lot like building a house. You really have to do — a brick house — you do have to do it one brick at a time. And have you to keep laying them. And one gets off, you’ve got to reset it and get it going, and just keep going.
“By the time you look up, you do it enough times for a long enough period of time, after a while you look up, and it’s, wow, look at this. We built a mansion. But you can only do it one brick at a time. That’s what we’ve attempted to do.”
