UK Athletics Photo
I still remember midway of the 2022 baseball season when things were not going great for Kentucky coach Nick Mingione’s team and he came on a radio show on WPBK (102.9 FM) out of Stanford and told us not to lose faith in the program.
I was not totally sure he would survive and be back coaching at UK in 2023 but he laid out plans for reviving the program.
Mingione did exactly what he said, too, despite playing the nation’s toughest schedule. Kentucky finished ninth in the SEC but every team above UK qualified for the NCAA Tournament just like the Cats did.
Kentucky not only got to host a regional, but came out of the loser’s bracket to reach the Super Regional where it went down at No. 5 LSU in two games. However, UK still finished 40-21 on the season, just the seventh time in school history it has won 40 or more games, and it’s 1-0 lead in Sunday’s game was UK’s first-ever lead in a super regional game.
“I think you guys could see how tough and gritty, unselfish, how much they love Kentucky, how they’re willing to do whatever it takes to win,” Mingione said after Sunday’s 8-3 loss at LSU. “And I feel bad I couldn’t help lead them to do something that’s never been done before in the history of our program.
“But these group of men have changed our program forever.”
He pointed out how pitcher Darren Williams asked on his visit to UK what it would take to host a NCAA regional at Kentucky Proud Park.
“It wasn’t about scholarship money or about NIL opportunities. It wasn’t about any of that. His whole goal was, what’s it going to take to host a regional at Kentucky,” Mingione said. “He’s a great example of what a real man should be like and what it’s like to be unselfish. And I’m thankful for him and the group of men that I had the opportunity and privilege to coach this year.”
Kentucky’s team was scrappy. It did not have the overall power of LSU or an ace pitcher likely to go high in the Major League Baseball draft. Kentucky didn’t even have a team loaded with all-conference players. It just had players who battled and found ways to get wins.
Mingione knows UK needs to build off this season that drew back to back all-time record crowds in NCAA regional play. Mingione wanted this to be the year UK was not a win short of being a NCAA team and could be a national seed.
“I’ve been fortunate enough to be in the postseason a lot in my career. I’ve had some success. I was just, like, ‘Man, we just gotta get there and I know we can do something,’” Mingione said. “But we’ve been to two (Super) Regionals in the last six years and we’ve never been to one ever. So we’re trending in the right direction.
“We’ll see what happens with the draft. We’ll see what happens with guys making decisions about the transfer portal and things like that. But we definitely have some holes to fill. I haven’t spent a ton of time on that because we’ve been playing and I’ve been focusing on these guys.
“But we’re close. It’s not far off. We’re really close. And these next two, three, four, five, six, eight weeks will help determine how the Wildcats will be next year.”
I liked that Mingione admitted Sunday he had “grown and learned a lot” as coach while making both good and bad decisions. Not every coach will admit some wrong decisions were made and cannot learn from mistakes.
“One thing I believe in is feedback. And feedback is the breakfast of champions. I have called former players. I’ve picked their brain,” Mingione said. “They’ve shared some tough things with me that I didn’t want to hear but were true. And I’ve tried to make adjustments and become a better coach.
“And the players are the ones that make coaches look good. We don’t do the pitches. We don’t take swings in the box. We don’t do any of that. They’re the ones that do all that. And they’ve made our coaching staff look really good. But they’re really the ones that have done it all.”
And this year Kentucky did that very well and probably way better than those outside the program were expecting.
