Kentucky Came to Win Games and Used Home Runs to do that

Vicky Graff Photo

Kentucky’s historic season certainly has featured a lot of brilliant, daring base running along with clutch hitting and timely pitching.

What Kentucky has not been known for is hitting home runs — but that changed Saturday in Omaha in UK’s first College World Series appearance.

First baseman Ryan Nicholson hit a leadoff home run in the bottom of the ninth inning to tie the game and third baseman Mitchell Daly hit a two-out solo homer in the 10th inning to beat North Carolina State 5-4.

“I just want to make sure that everybody knows it’s not all about bunting. The whatever-it-takes type of offense, please, because bunting is a small piece to it, but we can hit homers too,” a happy coach Nick Mingione said after the win.

Earlier in the game outfielder Nolan McCarthy blasted a two-run homer that also was huge in Kentucky’s school record 46th victory.

Kentucky gave up a run in the top of the ninth to fall behind 4-3 — the first time UK had trailed in a NCAA tournament game this year. Daly said catcher Devin Burks called the team together and said to keep having fun.

“The whole message through the entire day, from Coach Ming and the rest of the coaching staff was don’t try to do more. Just keep being us,” Daly said. “We have so much confidence in each other. And when he hit that home run, nobody was surprised.”

Nicholson went 3-for-4 and scored two runs in his World Series debut despite being what he called a “little nervy” before the game.

“I was a little more nervous for the first Super Regional game than this. But I just tried to feel like — I’ve played a lot of college baseball. There’s a lot of college games. There just happen to be a lot of people there today. I just try to look at it like that,” Nicholson said.

Mitchell’s home run touched off a wild celebration. His hit went into the UK bullpen and Kentucky players were sprinting from the bullpen toward home plate before Mitchell got to second base.

“I was just trying to see the slider up. I saw it up, and I just went for it,” Mitchell, who had two hits, said.

Nicholson understood how special the win was for Kentucky baseball and to be on the “ground floor” of what this program is trying to do.

“This will be — this game is a really good starting point and a big confidence builder going forward. We didn’t just come here just to be happy that we were here. We came here to win games. And that’s what we were trying to do today,” Nicholson said.