Mingione, Cats Excited for 2025 NCAA Baseball Regional
The Kentucky baseball team has experienced quite a few special moments this season. Beating then-No. 2 Texas in 15 innings, sweeping No. 17 Oklahoma, taking two out of three games against Tennessee in Knoxville and pounding 19th-ranked Louisville 17-5 at Kentucky Proud Park.
However, UK head coach Nick Mingione did not have his favorite moment of the season until Monday. That’s when Mingione, his staff and his team were gathered in the team room at KPP, watching the NCAA Baseball Selection Show.
“It happened yesterday. Just watching our guys celebrate yesterday has been a highlight,” Mingione said on Tuesday. “I told them yesterday, when you guys have families one day and you have children, if that’s what you choose to do, or when you lead an organization or a business, to watch your people celebrate with pure joy. It’s my favorite thing on the field or being involved in college athletics to witness. To watch a group of individuals, our coaches, our staff, our players, to watch the pure excitement and emotion. That was my favorite part of the season – to watch them celebrate.”
The Moment: We’re dancing! pic.twitter.com/IGtMUO9SM6
— Kentucky Baseball (@UKBaseball) May 26, 2025
What makes moments like that so special to Mingione?
“No one will understand the amount of hard work and discipline it took, no one will understand the sacrifices that they had to make,” Mingione said. “No one is going to know all of the time they spent extra time in the cages, working on their delivery, watching video, no one will understand the amount of time, effort and energy it took to get to this spot, but they do.”
Mingione has been proud of how his team has come together this season.
“I will tell you that, from day one, our team had a decision to make. Would they be a group of individuals, fighting for every job on the field, or would we be a team,” Mingione said. “I’m super proud of this team, and I say team because of what they’ve accomplished.”
The accomplishments of the 2025 Cats come just one year after a record-breaking season for the UK program. And one that saw many key pieces depart.
“Just to recap what all this team was tasked with. (They were) coming off the greatest baseball season in school history, where we were SEC champions and made our first-ever trip to the College World Series,” Mingione said. “We literally had (just) Devin (Burkes) and James (McCoy) back and every other spot was wide open. There were a lot of people who never even gave this team a chance to make the postseason.”
But on Monday, when the Cats saw their name come up in the Clemson Regional bracket, this team had accomplished something that had never been done at UK before.
“Here we are now, doing something that’s never been done in Kentucky baseball history, we’re playing in our third straight NCAA Regional,” Mingione said. “I couldn’t be more proud of the guys and our staff because I’ve been in this situation before as a head coach. When we lost that many people, we finished dead last in the SEC. We are now five wins away from going back to the College World Series.”
Mingione’s special moment came on Monday with his team. The UK skipper and the Cats are hoping for more magic moments this weekend in Clemson.
