Kentucky baseball to play in NCAA Tournament for fourth straight year
Kentucky baseball’s school-record NCAA Tournament streak was extended to four years Monday.
But the selection committee made the Wildcats sweat out the decision.
UK was included in the tournament for the fourth consecutive year as the No. 3 seed in the Morgantown regional. Nick Mingione’s team will open tournament play Friday against No. 2 seed Wake Forest at noon. No. 1 seed West Virginia and No. 4 seed Binghamton are the other teams in the double elimination regional.
The Morgantown regional was the final regional revealed on ESPN’s bracket show. West Virginia is the No. 16 overall seed in the tournament.
“What really stood out for Kentucky was 15-9 against teams in the field,” selection committee chairman Michael Alford said on the selection show. “When you look at teams who have won 15 games against tournament teams, most of them are hosting.”
The Wildcats entered Selection Monday ranked 37th in the RPI but won just one of their final nine weekend series. With the chance to seemingly end any doubt about its NCAA Tournament fate, Kentucky lost its SEC Tournament first round game against No. 12 seed Vanderbilt Tuesday.
Kentucky (31-21, 13-17) lost series to each of the four SEC teams that did not reach the NCAA Tournament but won 13 conference games. No SEC teams with at least 13 conference wins has been left out of the tournament since 2022.
Mingione’s team was never swept in the regular season and played for long stretches without multiple key players, including projected MLB draft first-round pick Tyler Bell. UK was 6-6 against teams picked to host regionals in the first weekend of the tournament.
Ultimately, Kentucky benefitted from a relatively chalky conference tournament week with only a couple of smaller conferences turning into multiple-bid leagues due to upsets in their tournaments.
The Wildcats were apparently not penalized for cancelling its final scheduled midweek game against Northern Kentucky, despite the NCAA Division I Baseball Oversight Committee issuing a warning to schools about cancelling games for non-weather-related reasons earlier this month. UK cited an arduous travel weekend during a series at Florida that featured multiple weather delays the weekend before as the reason for the cancellation, but even beating Northern Kentucky, which is ranked 278th in the RPI, would have likely hurt UK’s strength of schedule rating.
This story was originally published May 25, 2026 at 12:46 PM.