Kentucky baseball (43-14, 22-8 SEC) defeated Indiana State (44-15, 22-5 MVC) by a score of 5-0 to advance to the Super Regional round of the NCAA Tournament.
“These are experiences they will never forget,” Kentucky head coach Nick Mingione said. “As a coach, it brings me the greatest joy to watch them celebrate and have experiences they’ll never forget.”
There was certainly a buzz and large anticipation heading into the contest, not only due to what was at stake, but also due to an hour and 30-minute rain delay.
“I’m so thankful for the BNN, we have a saying in our program that we do not move and, when that weather came in, our fans did the same thing,” Mingione said. “They didn’t move, they held their ground and just waited.”
Once the rain passed, Indiana State took the field as the home team due to tournament rules, but the Wildcats wasted no time applying offensive pressure.
Émilien Pitre drew a one-out walk and advanced to third on a botched pickoff attempt by Sycamore starter Cole Gilley. This allowed Devin Burkes to hit a sacrifice fly to give Kentucky a 1-0 lead.
Mason Moore got the ball for the Wildcats on the mound and gave up a leadoff single, but bounced back with a strikeout and a double play to pitch a scoreless first.
The Bat Cats added to their lead in the second when Ryan Nicholson launched a 435-foot home run over the right field wall to extend the early lead by one.
After Moore worked around a walk to pitch a scoreless second, Nolan McCarthy was hit by a pitch with the bases loaded, which extended the lead to three.
Moore continued to work in and out of trouble in the third as he gave up two singles, but stranded both runners.
While the Wildcat offense went quiet in the middle innings, Moore continued to shine on the mound as he gave up a leadoff double in the fourth, but again worked out of the jam to remain clean.
“I always have to make one pitch,” Moore said about getting out of jams. “When you have a defense like we have, I wasn’t afraid to make the pitch down the middle whenever I needed to.”
The Wildcat righty found himself in major trouble in the fifth as he walked Riley Iffrig and Josue Urdaneta to bring up the top of the Sycamores’ order with no outs.
Moore got one step closer to avoiding damage by striking out Randal Diaz for the first out, but he spiked a pitch that advanced Iffrig to third.
Parker Stinson was up next and he hit a fly ball into shallow left but Grant Smith made a highlight-reel lunging catch for the second out, allowing Moore to get a groundout to escape another jam.
“That was pretty good,” Smith said. “I honestly don’t even remember it, I kinda blacked out.”
The smoothest inning of work for Moore came in his last as he tossed a three-up, three-down sixth inning.
“He has the clutch gene,” Mingione said. “To have a guy do this two years in a row, to have somebody for his state school who bleeds blue has been awesome.”
The Bat Cats returned to the scoreboard in the seventh when Pitre hit a two-run opposite field home run that extended the lead to 5-0 and Jackson Nove took over on the mound, getting two outs before being lifted for Cameron O’Brien, who stayed on and pitched the final 2.2 innings to secure the game and regional victory.
The shutout by the Wildcats broke a streak of 138-straight games in which Indiana State had not been kept off the board.
“They are a bunch of dogs,” Mingione said. “They wanted to win, the only way you’re going to do that is you have to make plays.”
Kentucky will now look ahead to Super Regionals where it will host for the first time in program history against the winner of the Corvallis Regional, Oregon State.
