Kentucky’s SEC baseball run not enough to get Wildcats in NCAA Tournament
The University of Kentucky’s valiant late-season run, which took the Wildcats all the way to the semifinals of last week’s Southeastern Conference Tournament, did not result in a berth in the NCAA Tournament when the field of 64 was drawn on Monday.
The Wildcats won two of their final three SEC series of the regular season — including one over top-ranked Tennessee — to secure the 12th and final spot in the conference tournament. UK then emerged as the surprise team of the week in Hoover, Ala., winning three games in four days to gain entry to the SEC Tournament semifinals on Saturday night. However, the Cats’ good fortune, and their pitching, reached their limits in a 12-2 loss to top-seeded Tennessee. The Volunteers went on Sunday to defeat Florida 8-5 in the championship game.
Tennessee’s tournament title earned the Volunteers the SEC’s automatic bid to the 75th NCAA Baseball Tournament, which will get underway Friday. The Vols, the No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament, were joined in the NCAA field by SEC schools Arkansas, Auburn, Florida, Georgia, LSU, Mississippi, Texas A&M and Vanderbilt.
Thirty-one teams received automatic NCAA bids as the result of winning conference championships, while 33 schools were awarded at-large berths.
The only school from the commonwealth to receive an NCAA bid Monday was Louisville (38-18-1). The Cardinals, champions of the ACC Atlantic Division title with an 18-11-1 regular-season mark, were awarded an at-large berth. North Carolina claimed the ACC’s automatic bid by winning the conference tournament.
Louisville will host one of the 16 opening-weekend regionals. Each regional field features four teams, playing in a double-elimination format. All 16 regionals are scheduled to be conducted from Friday through Monday (if necessary).
The Cardinals, the No. 12 overall seed in the NCAA field, will be joined at Jim Patterson Stadium this weekend by Ohio Valley Conference champion Southeast Missouri State (37-20), Michigan (32-26) and Oregon (35-23). U of L’s opening game Friday will be against SEMO.
The champion of the Louisville Regional will face the winner of the College Station Regional in the super-regional round June 10-13. The College Station Regional includes No. 5 Texas A&M, TCU, Louisiana and Oral Roberts.
Also hosting regionals will be No. 1 seed Tennessee, No. 2 Stanford, No. 3 Oregon State, No. 4 Virginia Tech, No. 6 Miami (Fla.), No. 7 Oklahoma State, No. 8 East Carolina, No. 9 Texas, No 10 North Carolina, No. 11 Southern Mississippi, No. 13 Florida, No. 14 Auburn, No. 15 Maryland and No. 16 Georgia Southern.
Kentucky finished its season 33-26 overall and 12-18 in the SEC regular season. UK was rated No. 52 in the latest NCAA baseball RPI, behind 10 other SEC teams.
Kentucky pinned its NCAA hopes on series wins against NCAA Tournament teams TCU, Tennessee, Auburn and Georgia.
All three of UK’s wins at the SEC Tournament (Auburn, LSU, Vanderbilt) came against teams in the NCAA Tournament field.
Working against UK was dropping series at Missouri (which didn’t qualify for the SEC Tournament) and at South Carolina (which didn’t make the NCAA Tournament) and midweek games to Western Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana and Eastern Kentucky.
The official “last four teams in” the NCAA field were Florida State, Grand Canyon, Liberty and Ole Miss. The “first four out” were North Carolina State, Old Dominion, Rutgers and Wofford.
The Wildcats have not qualified for the NCAA Tournament since 2017, when UK fell one step short of the program’s first-ever College World Series in Nick Mingione’s first season as head coach.
Mingione is 176-129 overall — third on UK’s all-time coaching wins list — and 63-87 in SEC regular-season games in six seasons as UK’s head coach. Mingione agreed to a contract extension through the 2025 season before the start of the 2021 season, which represented a three-year extension to his previous deal.
This story was originally published May 30, 2022 at 12:46 PM.