Nick Mingione believed Kentucky's resume was worthy of NCAA Tournament -- but 'put it in other people's hands'

It wasn’t a stress-free NCAA Tournament Selection Show for Nick Mingione and the Bat Cats, Kentucky losing four straight to end the year and eight of the last 12 to flirt with bubble status. Factor in some bid stealers complicating things late and some of the biggest publications — namely D1 Baseball and Baseball America — had the boys from Lexington on the outside looking in going into Memorial Day.

When you consider the fact Kentucky had a lead in 28 of 31 SEC games and only won 13, it was a tough pill to swallow as the wait grew longer and longer with no news of the Bat Cats joining the field of 64. As other bubble teams earned the nod, you braced for impact with 13 regions revealed out of 16 total and at-large spots disappearing left and right on the national broadcast, live on ESPN2.

Then we got to the Clemson Regional at No. 14 — the No. 1 seed Tigers hosting as the 11th national seed, joined by No. 4 seed South Carolina Upstate, and at long last, No. 3 seed Kentucky, set to take on No. 2 seed West Virginia. Welcome to the Big Dance, the Bat Cats punching a ticket for a third consecutive season, a first for the program with ten appearances all-time and four under Mingione.

How close was it? The final two regions were shared to complete the field, leading to the unveiling of the Last Four In and First Four Out — UK nowhere to be found. Instead, the former category included USC, Arizona State, Kansas State and Oklahoma State while the latter included SE Louisiana, Troy, UConn and Virginia. All that stress for nothing, Kentucky comfortably in the field as an at-large team.

That was Mingione’s hope, looking at his team’s resume and sitting at No. 38 in the RPI, but the Wildcats left it to chance after coming up short down the stretch this season. Their uncomfortable wait on Selection Monday was a product of Kentucky not taking care of business when it could and should have up to that point.

“You’d have to ask the players what it was like for them, but for me, we met Wednesday morning before we headed back from Hoover, and I literally just laid it out for the guys,” Mingione said Tuesday. “I just said, ‘Hey, here’s the deal. We’re going to talk. This is what we do as a family when something’s on your brain and heart.’ I felt like I did a bad job after Tuesday’s game with them, just my messaging to them, and I just slept on it and prayed about it. I was like, no, we’re going to meet Wednesday morning, and we just laid it all out for them, like, ‘Hey, here’s where we are at this point. At this point, we have put our season into other people’s hands to make a decision.’

“Typically, when you don’t win a tournament, that’s what happens, right? Now, with our league and us being up to 16 teams, I don’t think anybody felt like they really knew who was going to be in and who was not, how this was all going to work.”

It’s not the perfect path, traveling elsewhere for Regional play for the first time since 2014 and a No. 3 seed for the first time since 2008 with battles vs. WVU (No. 28 RPI) and Clemson (No. 9 RPI) potentially ahead for a return to the Super Regional, but they’re in the field.

That’s not something you can take for granted, joining a league with 13 total teams included in the NCAA Tournament. You did enough against the best of the best, and now, you get a chance to prove yourself against the rest.

“What I told them was I believed in what we accomplished during the regular season, and we had proved that we could play with any team and every team. Therefore, if you can do that in the Southeastern Conference, you can beat the best teams and you can play with the best teams, you’re clearly one of the best teams,” Mingione continued. “But we were going to wait and see — and I’m sure for them, it was a bit of a roller coaster, but my message to them was really clear the whole time. It was just like, ‘I still believe in this team, and I believe that we’re going to keep playing, but we put it in other people’s hands.’ But I still believed in our track record and our resume.

“I mean, we played one of the toughest schedules in the entire country, and we beat some of the best teams in the entire country.”

What-ifs, close calls and bubble talk are all behind them. Now, Kentucky controls its own destiny with a fresh slate going into the Big Dance, starting against West Virginia on Friday at Noon ET, live on ESPNU.