Nick Mingione reflects on Kentucky's season, buy-in from team after Regional exit

Kentucky‘s season came to an end Sunday night with its 13-12 loss to West Virginia in the Clemson Regional Final. It marked Kentucky’s 12th loss by one run this season, which was the amount of one-run losses it had in its last 228 games prior to this season.

“Just the buy-in,” head coach Nick Mingione responded when asked about his biggest takeaway from the season. “When you think about the questions that every coach has to ask themselves going into Opening Day, you need to know who your Friday starter is, you need to know who your Saturday starter is, you need to know who your Sunday starter is, you need to know who your mid-week starter is, you need to know who your stopper out of the bullpen is and you need to know who your closer is.”

The problem this season for Kentucky is that it had none of those roles returning.

“So really you have to know for sure without a shadow of a doubt that these are the six guys that we need to have defined roles going into opening weekend. And then you need nine positional players. Going into the first game, these are the nine guys that are going to play. So really you have 15 roles that you have to decide. We lost 13 out of 15.”

The players lost from Kentucky’s “15 guys” from last season include:

• 1B Ryan Nicholson (selected in 2025 MLB Draft)
• 2B Émilien Pitre (selected in 2025 MLB Draft)
• SS Grant Smith (signed as UDFA)
• 3B Mitchell Daly (signed as UDFA)
• LF Ryan Waldschmidt (selected in 2025 MLB Draft)
• CF Nolan McCarthy (transferred to Georgia)
• DH Nick Lopez (out of eligibility)
• RHP Trey Pooser (out of eligibility) – Friday starter
• LHP Dominic Niman (selected in 2025 MLB Draft) – Saturday starter
• RHP Mason Moore (signed as UDFA) – Sunday starter
• RHP Robert Hogan (injured) – Stopper
• RHP Johnny Hummel (out of eligibility) – Closer

The lone returnees included right fielder James McCoy and catcher Devin Burkes.

“SEC champions and College World Series,” Mingione sighed. “We lost 13 out of 15. So, this offseason it was the craziest and least enjoyable summer of my life because we had to figure all of that out with our current team and manage that because we played so long in Omaha (that was awesome). But there was just a lot to that. End of player meetings and how are we going to fill that.”

This offseason, Kentucky brought in 15 different transfers. Just seven of those transfers however ended up playing a major role in the Wildcats’ season (RHP Simon Gregersen, LF Cole Hage, CF Carson Hansen, 2B Luke Lawrence, RHP Nic McCay, RHP Scott Rouse and LHP Ethan Walker).

The ‘Cats were a young team mixing and matching spots in the lineup and roles in the field and still ended up making a third consecutive Regional final.

“I told them there were not a lot of people that were going to give them a chance. So when I look back and I think about what this team has done, the amount of time, effort, energy and the buy-in that they just literally just bought into everything we were doing. It was truly remarkable.”