Nick Mingione issues challenge to BBN at Media Day

Kentucky Baseball head coach Nick Mingione spoke to the media at Tuesday’s Media Day event, where he challenged Kentucky fans to build off of last year’s momentum as a fanbase. In 2024, the Cats won a program record 46 games and made an appearance in the Men’s College World Series for the first time ever. The fans have played a major part in this success.

“I have a challenge for the Big Blue Nation to build off of last year’s success and momentum as a fanbase,” Mingione said. “To watch I don’t know how many thousand people get involved with the walk-out songs and chants and pink hats (maybe it’ll be green this year I don’t know), whatever we have I just want to challenge the Big Blue Nation to do what we’ve done the last two years; getting involved in it because it makes an impact.”

The Big Blue Nation has showed up and showed out, setting Kentucky Proud Park attendance records left and right over the past two seasons. The nine most attended games in park history have occurred in the past two seasons, with seven of the games occurring last season. Kentucky’s Super Regional games against Oregon State drew 7,558 fans and 7,441 fans, the two highest attended games ever at KPP.

Over the past two seasons, Mingione and the Kentucky program as a whole has adopted the “Get Weird” moniker. According to senior left-handed pitcher Jackson Nove, this has meant many things. Some of these “weird” dugout rituals include Sideways Six (the players would turn their hats sideways during the sixth inning), Bubble Gum Third, Groups of Four in the Fourth (the players would stand in groups of four in the fourth inning), and the playing of the Rattlin’ Bog while the players sling water up into the air.

“I’ve had college coaches tell me ‘coach, that was an awesome environment,’ Mingione said. “I could barely communicate with my team because we couldn’t hear each other. Our players literally couldn’t hear each other at times because of the crowd so I just want to encourage our fans to just get on board again.”

Kentucky opens its 2025 season on the road at Lipscomb on February 14 and hosts its home opener at Kentucky Proud Park against Morehead State on February 18.