Nick Mingione reflects on 2024 SEC Coach of the Year, reveals postseason expectations
On Monday, Kentucky head coach Nick Mingione was named the 2024 SEC Baseball Coach of the Year. During an interview with the SEC Network on Tuesday, Mingione revealed what the honor means to him.
“I’ve surrounded myself with amazing coaches, staff and have a bunch of dogs as players. You guys know this, I really view this as a team award,” Mingione said. “There’s no way I could do this by myself. The preparation and everything that goes into assembling a team and getting them ready to compete at the highest level in the greatest league in America — no way I could do it by myself.”
Mingione led Kentucky to a 39-12 overall record during the regular season and a 22-8 mark in conference play. With a win over Vanderbilt this past weekend, Kentucky secured a share of the SEC regular-season title for only the second time in program history and the first time since 2006.
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Kentucky’s 22 wins against conference foes in the regular season were a program record. Altogether, Kentucky boasted a 19-6 record against Quad 1 teams during the regular season, which is five more wins than any other team in the country (Texas A&M and Tennessee each had 14 wins).
Mingione is the first head coach in Kentucky baseball history to win the award twice. John Cohen (2006) and Gary Henderson (2012) were also winners of the award. Arkansas’ Dave Van Horn, Vanderbilt’s Tim Corbin, and Florida’s Kevin O’Sullivan are the only other active SEC head coaches to win the award more than once.
Nick Mingione is hungry for more
While Mingione is honored by the achievement, he isn’t ready for Kentucky’s season to end.
“I want our guys to have experiences that they can have for the rest of their life,” Mingione said. “Them celebrating last Friday and being SEC champions, no one will ever be able to take that away from them. When you can do that as a coach or a parent or a father, and give your kids or your teammates an experience — that’s more important to me than anything.
“They’re champions of the Southeastern Conference, and they want more and I want to be able to just be along for the ride with him and for the rest of the country. I’m just thankful that they’ve been able to earn their respect. And I think in life, that’s what you got to do.”
Kentucky will take on LSU in the SEC Tournament on Wednesday at 9:30 a.m. ET. The game will be broadcast on the SEC Network.