Robert Hogan puts Kentucky on his back in Regional opener

Right-hander Robert Hogan turned in one of the best outings of his career Friday night, holding Western Michigan scoreless over the final 3 1/3 innings to secure the 10-8 Lexington Regional opening win for Kentucky.

“I guess just throwing strikes,” Hogan responded when asked what was going well for him on Friday. “That was the biggest thing, just being able to throw every pitch for a strike. That keeps the hitters off balance. And I have an unbelievable defense behind me. So it’s easy to pitch when you have guys like [Grant Smith] behind me and James [McCoy]. They’re getting the balls that not a lot of teams can. It’s a lot easier to pitch like that.”

Hogan has been unbelievable for Nick Mingione’s squad down the final stretch of the season. Including Friday’s outing, the right-hander has allowed just two earned runs in his last 12 2/3 innings pitched (1.48 ERA). He earned his first save since 2022 on Friday.

“I’m going to say I’m going to get some rest tonight, do some recovery. Probably do a light day tomorrow or take it off, no throwing, and I’ll be ready for Sunday.” Hogan threw 50 pitches in the outing and expects to be ready to go for Sunday’s game.

Mingione spoke highly of Hogan postgame.

“After every game, our standard is to have 80 percent quality pitches,” Mingione said. “So the following day, Coach [Dan] Roszel, he is turning up his chart right now. I know exactly what he’s doing, he’ll send me a text and we’ll see where we’re at with our quality pitches. Before the game tomorrow we’ll talk about the quality of pitches. Whenever Hogey meets that standard, and most of the time he does, and I say, ‘all right, Robert Hogan, 84 percent’, the team goes crazy for the guy. They love him. And I mentioned that to him even, might have been yesterday at practice. I said ‘I love the way the team loves you, Hogey’.”

Hogan was just one of four Kentucky arms that pitched Friday (Niman, O’Brien, Byers). Right-handers Ryan Hagenow, Johnny Hummel, Travis Smith and left-handers Jackson Nove and Ben Cleaver will be good to go out of the pen in Saturday’s game.

The Cats will face the winner of Indiana State/Illinois on Saturday at 6:00 p.m. EST. Western Michigan/the loser of Indiana State and Illinois will play in an eliminator on Saturday at noon EST, with the loser heading home.