Nick Mingione opens up on strength of Kentucky's pitching staff

Kentucky baseball is heading to their second Super Regional ever after coming back from a Saturday defeat to win three in a row and take the cake in their very own Lexington regional. En route to the comeback victory over the weekend, the ‘Cats played superb baseball, but got especially strong play from the mound, where both starting and relief pitching was elite.

The Wildcats opened the weekend by blanking Ball State 4-0 to move on to the winner’s bracket, where they lost narrowly to Indiana 5-3 after a solid start from Zach Lee got away from him towards the end. But UK then recored a 10-0 shutout vs. West Virginia, a 16-6 romp over IU and then another win over the Hoosiers, 4-2, to close it out.

All in all, that’s a 2.2 ERA allowed by Kentucky’s pitching staff — an absolutely remarkable figure for a regional. After the final victory, UK head coach Nick Mingione was quick to praise his arms for getting the ‘Cats home. He praised the depth of the team’s pitching staff and singled out pitching coach Dan Roszel for his great work.

Take a look:

“We knew the strength of our staff was going to be the depth. And I kept getting those questions from a lot of you in February. And then we got into the couple weeks of March, and by the time we started up opening up SEC play it dawned on me that this was as deep a pitching staff as I’ve had here. That’s saying a lot because we’ve had a lot of really good arms.

“So the depth of our pitching staff is definitely one of our strengths. There’s no way you come out of the losers’ bracket and to put up those few of runs, and you’re only going to do that with a really good defense. But our pitchers — Coach (Dan) Roszel is a premier coach, everywhere he’s been. You go back, look at his track record.”

“He’s put together some really good staffs. You even heard Darren mention his name afterwards because of all the time and effort that he’s poured into our guys. It was definitely a good thing.”

After those great performances at the mound, Kentucky is playing like one of the most balanced and complete teams in college baseball, and at the perfect time on the Calendar. More history, the program’s first trip to Omaha, is at arm’s reach as Kentucky has two and potentially three games in Baton Rouge to earn a trip to the College World Series.