Cats Taking One Step at a Time on Path to Supers

Kentucky is a team whose strength is its balance and depth. The Wildcats pride themselves on having a lineup with no easy outs and a staff of pitchers all capable of getting outs.

That’s been borne out in the Lexington Regional this weekend, with contributions coming from up and down the roster. So much so, in fact, that even players who haven’t even seen the field have found a way to help the team.

Austin Keen has appeared in only 11 games this season, but he’s been the breakout star of the postseason so far thanks to a two-foot-tall cap he fashioned out of cups. The redshirt freshman right-handed pitcher first appeared on the ESPN broadcast of UK’s afternoon win over Indiana to stave off elimination.

That inspired Nick Mingione – never one to miss a chance to impart a lesson to his team – in his message prior to UK’s second game of the day on Sunday evening.

“I’m about to go tell my team he built that thing one cup at a time,” Mingione said. “And that’s how we’re going to have to do this: We’re going to have win this pitch and then we’re going to win the inning and then we’re going to have to win the game.”

With that oddly conceived bit of motivation in their minds, the Wildcats came out on top 8-6 against North Carolina State to set up a third matchup between the two teams on Monday at 7 p.m. This one will be a winner-take-all showdown with a berth in super regionals on the line.

“When we talked about we’ll never stop competing, you guys saw that today,” Mingione said. “It took all day. It took everyone. It took our entire team. And we did it one cup at a time.”

UK pounded out 22 runs on 32 hits in two wins on Sunday, with all eight players who started both games tallying a base knock and seven coming up with two or more.

“Everybody just picked each other up,” said Marcus Carson, who had four hits on the day including a game-tying home run in the fourth inning against NC State. “When somebody didn’t get something done, the next guy was there to pick them up. It kind of just speaks about our team, how we’re just all brothers and we’re just always there for each other.”

The Cats are using the big stage of this regional to introduce themselves to a wider audience, but that’s nothing new for this group.

“If you look today as a whole and it doesn’t define Kentucky baseball to you, then you need to take another look at our team,” said Riley Mahan, batting 9 of 16 on the weekend with 11 runs batted in after going 5 for 9 with a grand slam on Sunday. “Today was awesome for many reasons and we had a lot of guys do a lot of great things.”

That’s true on the mound as well.

After Zack Thompson picked up the win in the matinee, Brad Schaenzer and Chris Machamer combined to get the ball to closer Logan Salow with an 8-6 lead in the nightcap. All he did was toss 2.2 perfect innings, striking out four in the process.

“This is where we wanted to be,” Salow said. “Obviously it wasn’t the easiest path, but it’s been like that for us all year. We’ve grinded out pitchers, we’ve grinded out games and today was another example of that. To be on the mound (to close it out), it was great and all, but we gotta play tomorrow.”

That fact that UK’s star closer is talking that way should come as no surprise considering the message he heard pregame from his coach. Not to mention the message the Cats have heard all year long.

“We’re just laying brick by brick and at the end of the season we’re going to have this beautiful mansion,” Carson said. “Coach Minge talked about that at the beginning of the season and that’s kind of like how we’ve been going about—even like right now, one inning, we’re just taking each inning one by one and then we’re taking game by game.”

The next such opportunity comes Monday, this time with UK chasing its first-ever trip to super regionals. It’s already been a memorable weekend at Cliff Hagan Stadium, with a record attendance of 4,742 on Saturday night and an even more raucous crowd of 3,261 there Sunday night.

“The fans tonight were phenomenal,” Mahan said. “They poured into us so much and they helped us so much. We’re so grateful for them and we hope we get all those people back and more to help us out.”

“I’m going to make a plea to the entire city of Lexington for us to break another record that we’ve already set,” Mingione said. “We’ve had over 18,000 people show up in the last three days to watch us play. It means the world to us. If I never ask another favor the rest of the year, I’m going to ask them to show up tomorrow night to support our young men.”

In the meantime, Mingione is sending his team home for a long night’s sleep before a late-morning meeting tomorrow. He’ll also need to work on a follow-up to his “one cup at a time” speech.

“I haven’t gotten there yet, but there will be something placed on my heart tomorrow,” Mingione said.