Nick Mingione details the challenge of preparing for unfamiliar opponents

One aspect of postseason play that can make an overall impact is the lack of familiarity that teams have with the opponents in their bracket. That leads to a lot of required scouting, which is what Nick Mingione and his coaches have been busy with as of late for No. 2 Kentucky.

Mingione explained their team’s preparation for the Lexington Regional this weekend during a press conference following their selection for the 2024 NCAA Baseball Tournament. He said it takes a ton of work from their building to find any and all information that they can. From there, they’ll put it all together into something helpful to give to their players.

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“Yeah, that’s a good question. Part of the reason why we chose to practice at two was to give our staff time to reach out to other teams to get scouting reports, to get their thoughts,” explained Mingione. “The coaches are in there right now. They’re organizing who’s reaching out to what schools to get these scouting reports – who we’ve played, who we can maybe exchange information on.”

“Then, obviously, after that, Trevor Fitts, our Director of Player Development, does an awesome job. He prepares a folder for every single team that we play. It includes their stats, it includes previous scouting reports. It includes everything that we can collect on our opponents,” Mingione continued. “Then, obviously, we will start tonight as soon as practice is over. We’ll get something to eat and we’ll just start diving into our opponents.”

That’s what Kentucky has been working on ever since to prep for Western Michigan, Indiana State, and Illinois. Not to look ahead but that could also include previews for a potential Super Regional matchup against those in Corvallis. That field includes No. 15 Oregon State along with UC Irvine, Nicholls State, or Tulane.

In total, Mingione added that up to almost a day of film for each respective opponent for the coaches. That’s how thorough they want to be in order to be ready, especially for any of these possible postseason matchups.

“It takes a lot of time,” said Mingione. “You know, one thing I’ve learned about our staff is the amount of time, effort, and energy that we put into preparing for our opponent is a lot. If you told me we watched over 20 hours of video on our opponents for each team, I would believe it. I would tell you that I 100% believe that it’s over 20 hours per opponent.”

“You start doing that,” Mingione said. “I don’t do 20 hours by myself. But, when you look at everybody that we’re getting ready to play, our staff? We just have a lot of preparation to do on our end.”

However, that is just a given sacrifice that they’re willing to do. A national title or a season’s end are on the line now, which is why Mingione and the Wildcats are going to evaluate everything as best as they can in order to be all set for this weekend and ones that could follow.

“It’s what we love. This is the best time of year,” said Mingione. “If you don’t get as much sleep, that’s okay. Because, obviously, this is the time of year that we’ve all prepared for.”