Bat Cats drop to No. 4 in D1Baseball Top 25 Rankings

Following its 17-13 midweek win over Louisville and first SEC series loss of the season to Tennessee, Kentucky dropped one spot from No. 3 to No. 4 in the latest D1Baseball Top 25 Rankings.

The Cats won the opening game of the Tennessee series in a 5-3 nail-biter, but allowed five first inning runs to the Volunteers on Saturday and were unable to dig out of that deficit. This set up a Sunday rubber match, where Tennessee’s Christian Moore belted three home runs to deliver the series to the Volunteers.

“This was an example of us not executing at a high level on a pitching and defensive side,” Nick Mingione said following Sunday’s game. “When you have two good offenses, we out-hit them we out-homered them, but the bottom line is they scored more runs than we did so they win.”

As of Monday morning, Kentucky currently sits at 32-7 (15-3) overall, and remain three games ahead of Tennessee in the SEC East. The Cats are also one game up on Arkansas for the overall conference crown, which they’ve won just once in program history.

There are eight SEC teams ranked in this week’s Top 25, including the entirety of the top four. No. 4 Kentucky is joined by No. 1 Texas A&M, No. 2 Arkansas, No. 3 Tennessee, No. 11 Vanderbilt, No. 20 Georgia, No. 23 Alabama, and No. 24 South Carolina.

It’ll be a long week of rest and practice for the Bat Cats, as they don’t have a midweek game scheduled this week for the first time this season. They won’t play until Friday, until they travel to No. 24 South Carolina for a weekend series.