Cats Use Familiar Formula in Unfamiliar Situation

Cliff Hagan Stadium felt like a new ballpark on Friday, with 3,956 fans packing both permanent seating and new bleachers installed for NCAA Tournament regional play.

The playing field, however, was unchanged. So too was the home-standing team playing on it.

“Regardless of how many fans would have showed up, I think we were going to go out and play our game,” second baseman Riley Mahan said.

Kentucky used the same offense it has all season to back a characteristically strong outing on the mound from Sean Hjelle to down Ohio in its regional opener, 6-4. The Wildcats worked deep counts, never gave up on at-bats or innings, and made life generally miserable for opposing pitchers just as they have all season.

“I thought our offense was relentless,” head coach Nick Mingione said.

UK will take that relentlessness into a matchup with the winner of second-seeded Indiana and No. 3 North Carolina State at 7 p.m. on Saturday.

The Cats made their intentions clear immediately with something that’s become a sort of calling card for them: a two-out rally.

“We say all the time: We like to believe we’re the best team in the country with two outs,” Mahan said. “A lot of teams get two quick outs and they feel like their inning’s over, but when we get two quick outs we know that our inning is just getting started because we know the pitcher’s most vulnerable when there’s two quick outs.”

After Ohio quickly recorded two outs in the bottom of the first, Zach Reks fell behind 0-2. While most thought UK was headed for a 1-2-3 inning to match Ohio’s in the top of the inning, Reks had other ideas. He fouled off a pitch, took a ball and laced a double into right center. Two singles to follow by Luke Becker and Riley Mahan gave UK a 2-0 lead.

“This guy (Reks) right here is down two strikes and with two outs and he hits a double and we proceed to score two runs when we were down to our last strike in the first inning,” Mingione said. “So this guy is a perfect example along with the rest of these guys about how we’re never out of the game, we’ll never stop competing and they’re going to do everything they can to give us a chance to win.”

From there, UK created bumper-to-bumper traffic on the bases – which the Cats reminded themselves all week are still 90 feet apart, even on a big postseason stage. UK pounded out 13 hits and drew nine walks, chasing Ohio starter Michael Klein after only four innings. 

“Offensively they showed today why they’re one of the best offenses in the country,” Ohio head coach Rob Smith said.

That never-say-die mentality has been cultivated since the very first meeting Mingione had with his team upon being hired nearly a year ago. 

“From the second I got hired and our staff was here, I’ve always told our guys we’ll never stop competing,” Mingione said. “It doesn’t matter. We could be down to the last out, the last strike, it doesn’t matter until the third out’s made.”

Confidence, perhaps more than anything, has defined the Mingione era. It’s that confidence that made Mingione so sure UK could win at a high level, could draw crowds like Friday’s. That doesn’t mean he was any less grateful when it happened.

“As that game went on and I saw all those people, man, I was just so thankful and appreciative of the Big Blue Nation because it’s 12 o’clock on a Friday,” Mingione said. “There’s a lot of people. You’re looking around going like, ‘Shouldn’t these people be at work?’ “

It was the Cats who went to work on Friday afternoon, taking the exact same approach that earned them the right to host their first regional since 2006. They’ve always known that doing so would land them in situations like this.

“It’s what we’ve been talking about since day one,” Hjelle said. “We set our goals out day one and Coach has been saying Omaha since then. Coming out here and fully experiencing that, you can get an image in your head of what it might be and during practice leading up to it you can kind of see, but coming out for the first time seeing that and just realizing that’s what we’ve been talking about since day one was a pretty rewarding feeling. And it’s only going to get more rewarding from here on out.”