Inability to finish games has sunk Kentucky all season long

If I were to tell you Kentucky has held a lead in 27 of its 30 SEC games this season, how many wins would you expect it to have? 20? 15? Well… no.

The ‘Cats will head to next week’s SEC Tournament as the No. 13 seed with a 13-17 conference record, the lowest seed in the Nick Mingione era. Now this is in no way remotely close to being the worst team of the Mingione era, as they are even likely to make the NCAA Tournament for the third consecutive season.

Most frustrating team of the Mingione era may be a more suitable moniker.

If one series was to sum up this season as a whole for Kentucky, it would be its final conference series of the season against No. 9 Vanderbilt. It held at least a two-run lead in all three games, and even held ninth inning leads in the first two games of the series. The Commodores however belted walk-off home runs in the first two games and outscored Kentucky 5-0 over the final 3 1/3 innings to finish off a sweep.

“It’s one of those things where our team needs to learn how to finish,” Mingione said following Kentucky’s 6-3 loss to No. 2 Texas on April 11. “There’s the deal about where you gotta get a lead and you gotta keep your lead and expand your lead. But we haven’t closed out enough games, and really it’s been a bit of everything. It’s not just one thing, you can’t just put your finger on the one thing. We have found multiple ways to let our opponents back in the game and at some point we need to put our foot down and say no, no more. No more. We’ve done it at times, not enough.”

This quote is nearly a month old now, but the sentiment remains the same. The ‘Cats just aren’t closing out games at an effective level.

Looking at all 30 SEC games this season, Kentucky has scored a combined 129 runs in the first five innings of play. Over the final four innings of play however, Kentucky has scored just 52 runs. It scored five or more runs in the final four innings in just three of its 30 SEC games and will head to the postseason having scored a combined five runs in the final four innings of its last nine SEC games.

Kentucky has even held a multi-run lead in nine of its 17 conference losses. The ‘Cats are starting out strong, but going out with a whimper.

Because it earned the No. 13 seed in the SEC Tournament, Kentucky will face off against No. 12 seed Oklahoma in the second game of the Tuesday session. First pitch is scheduled for approximately 2:30 p.m. EST.

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