Kentucky’s Season Ends in Extra-Inning Defeat

MORGANTOWN, W.V. – Kentucky’s season ended on Monday night with a 6-5, 10-inning defeat to West Virginia but the Wildcats went out the way they spent the season, battling to the end despite hurdle after hurdle.

Down to their final four outs the Wildcats erased a four-run deficit, hushed a delirious home crowd with two mammoth swings and gave the Mountaineers everything they wanted for 28 innings of baseball over three days. In the end, West Virginia scraped across one more run (26-25) to advance.

Despite the defeat, UK reached a fourth consecutive regional championship and in doing so became the only Southeastern Conference program to do so. And were agonizingly close to making a third Super Regional in four seasons.

On Monday, West Virginia held all the momentum and a 5-1 lead with two outs and nobody Cats on base. But true to form, UK did not go quietly. Tyler Bell and Luke Lawrence laced singles in front of Hudson Brown, who demolished a 440-foot home run – his second of the night – to pull within a run. Moments later, Ethan Hindle silenced the crown with a home run of his own to tie the game.

As the game moved to extras, Hindle nearly played the hero again but saw his drives down both lines land inches foul. Tyler Cerny then hammered a ball right at the left fielder to end the 10^th. WVU’s winning rally started with a jam-shot grounder to beat the shift and a walk before Armani Guzman – who had 14 hits in the five postseason meetings the past two seasons – lined a ball into center that eluded Jayce Tharnish’s diving attempt and walked off the Cats.

NOTES

• Kentucky is 33-23 on the season.
• UK Coach Nick Mingione is in his 10th season at the helm and now owns a 326-215 career record.
  • Mingione is the second-winningest coach in school history.
  • Mingione is 17-12 in the NCAA Tournament.
    • He is 15-6 in the regional round.
  • Mingione is 2-4 vs. West Virginia.

• This is UK’s fourth consecutive trip to the regional finals.
  • Mingione is 5-for-5 in doing so in his tenure.
  • UK is the only SEC program to accomplish that feat.
• This is the fifth time these teams have met in a regional the past two seasons.
  • Those games have been decided by 1, 1, 2, 2 and 1 runs.
• UK scored four runs in the eighth inning. It is the 55th time this season the Cats have scored three or more runs in an inning.