Nick Mingione on Kentucky's offense: 'I'm not interested in easy coaching'

The Kentucky Wildcats came up short in the NCAA Tournament Regional. None of the blame fell on the offense, though, which put up 38 runs in four games, including 28 runs in their final two games.

After the second loss to West Virginia, Kentucky head coach Nick Mingione praised his team’s offense. In particular, he emphasized how complex it is to force pressure on opposing defenses and create the kind of chaos that was felt in the Regional.

“Our style of offense is extremely complex,” Nick Mingione said. “I refer to it as a whatever-it-takes type of offense. So, when you do that, there’s so many details that you have to nail from the size of your lead to the way you look in, to the way you round the bases, to the way you put your face close to the barrel on the bunt. There’s so many levels of detail that go into running a complete offense, and I’ve always said this: easy coaching is just sitting back and doing nothing. I’m not interested in easy coaching. I’m interested in creating pressure on our opponents.”

Kentucky opened the Regional with a loss to West Virginia. That was a relatively low-scoring 4-3 game. From there, the Wildcats seemed to put it together on offense, beating USC Upstate 7-3 and Clemson 16-4 to force a win-or-go-home rematch with the Mountaineers. There, Kentucky would fall 13-12. The offense, once again, held up, forcing five errors in the game. However, the pitching didn’t come through at the end of a long weekend.

“We scored how many runs in the last two games? [28]. And our opponents committed [12] errors. That’s what we’re after. So, there’s a lot of times we’re gonna do things. Like, why’d he do that? Why’d they do that? And we are throwing punches,” Mingione said. “But they’re calculated punches. My college coach always reminded me of that. He’s like, ‘We’re gonna throw punches, but they’re gonna be calculated.’ So, just super proud. Even when you think about Coach [Chase] Slone, who runs our offense. First year in our program. As the season went on, he just kept getting better, and better, and better.”

This season, Kentucky finished 122nd out of 299 teams in scoring offense, averaging 6.9 runs per game. That was despite finishing 206th in batting average, hitting .271 as a team. However, Kentucky was also 16th in stolen bases per game, averaging 2.33. The Wildcats were also 12th in sacrifice bunts with 45.

“So, a lot of guys that really just got comfortable,” Mingione said. “That’s what happened. They just got comfortable, and they were able to execute it at a very high level.”