Nick Mingione takes a look at Kentucky's future, how baseball program has been changed

Kentucky baseball coach Nick Mingione believes that the Wildcats took another step in the right direction as a program in 2023.

Kentucky was one of the top 16 seeds in the country and hosted the Lexington Regional, advancing through it to a super regional for only the second time in school history.

The Wildcats ultimately had their season come to an end, going 0-2 against LSU in the super regionals, but it was still a solid year for Mingione’s club. He was asked after the season came to an end about the program and how to continue to move it forward.

“We’ve been to two [super] regionals in the last [seven] years and we’ve never been to one ever [before that]. So we’re trending in the right direction,” Mingione said. “We’ll see what happens with the draft, we’ll see what happens with guys making decisions about the transfer portal and things like that. We definitely have some holes to fill. Haven’t spent a ton of time on that, because we’ve been playing and I’ve been focusing on these guys. But we’re close. It’s not far off. We’re really close. These next two, three, four, five, six, eight weeks will help determine how the Wildcats will be next year.”

Mingione has been the head coach at Kentucky since 2017 after previously working as an assistant at several schools, including Mississippi State.

The Wildcats made the postseason his first season, before missing it the next five years. His hope is that now the Wildcats can make the College World Series for the first time in school history in the not-too-distant future.

“Obviously we need to build off of this, but the way that you do that… We were this close to being a national seed. We were a couple of wins away. I said at our media day at the beginning of the year how I wanted to get our program to where we were on the other side of that. I was tired of being one and two wins short of even making the postseason,” Mingione said. “And I’ve been fortunate to be in the postseason a lot in my career and have had some success. I was just like, ‘Man, we’ve just got to get there and I know we can do something.’”

The Wildcats did do something in the postseason in 2023, reaching the super regionals. Perhaps next year they will be able to win a few more games in the regular season and potentially host a super regional, allowing them to be at home for the supers.