Cats Overcome Early Deficit with Strong Bullpen, Timely Hitting

On Saturday, the Kentucky baseball team found itself in a precarious situation in the top of the first inning. Alabama had already scored two runs and had the bases loaded when UK head coach Nick Mingione pulled starting pitcher Ben Cleaver after only two-thirds of an inning.

Mingione went to Nile Adcock, who came on to get Kentucky out of the inning without further damage. However, the Tide would build a 4-1 lead in the fourth inning, and the Kentucky offense had shown no signs of breaking through.

Then, in the bottom of the fifth inning, the Cats struck. Tagger Tyson and Owen Jenkins had singles to lead off the inning, then Jayce Tharnish doubled in the left center field gap to score Tyson. Luke Lawrence then singled to score Jenkins and Tharnish and the game was tied.

Later in the inning, with Lawrence at third, Hudson Brown laid down a perfect sacrifice bunt to give UK its first lead. Brown added a three-run homer in the seventh inning and the Cats held off a late Alabama rally to win 8-7.

Brown noted that, despite the slow start to the day, the Cats are never defeated until the final out.

“We’re never out of a game,” Brown said. “You saw it today, our fight. We’ll fight back against anything, overcome adversity. This team is unbelievable. No matter how far we are behind, we’re never out of a game. And we’ll always find a way to fight back, scratch and claw and fight.”

Mingione saw his team score in various ways on Saturday, just the way he likes it.

“You’ve got to do whatever it takes,” Mingione said. “I say it all the time, we’re a whatever it takes type of offense.”

Mingione was quick to credit the Big Blue Nation on Saturday. The crowd of 3,178 was into the game and gave the Cats a boost.

“Give our fans a lot of credit,” Mingione said. “You felt them. The second we started making that comeback, I thought this place lifted our guys up.”

Mingione also gave a ton of credit to the bullpen, which was forced to get the last 25 outs of the game.

“Our bullpen was phenomenal,” Mingione said. “Eight and a third (innings), to do the job they did. Every guy that came in there got outs for us.”

Despite being down early, the Cats found a way to move to 2-0 in Southeastern Conference play on the season.