LEXINGTON, KY — The Men's College World Series record book chants SEC! SEC!. Actually, it screams SEC! SEC!  at the top of its lungs. One thing, though. The Men's College World Series record book doesn’t say a single, solitary word about Kentucky. And boy, do they ever want to change that around here.
As college baseball began another postseason run to Omaha Friday and the Kentucky Wildcats took the field, it was a good time to behold the aura of the mighty SEC.
Not just that 11 conference teams are in the NCAA tournament field — or 17 percent of the bracket. An all-time record.
Not just that five of the top seven seeds in the tournament — including the top three — are league members. Or that if you wanted to just take the 11 SEC teams and give the other 53 in a bet for the national championship, good luck finding any takers. The league has produced the past four national champions, five of the past six and nine of the past 14, by six different programs. Only once in the 15 MCWS since 2007 have the two-team championship finals not included an SEC face — 2016. Four times, the conference had both teams in the finals.
There is also this: When Oklahoma and Texas arrive next year, the SEC will have 15 schools with a combined 162 trips to Omaha, through 2023. One. Hundred. Sixty. Two.
But this is about the 16th school. The program that won the SEC season championship this season but remains the one and only conference member never to see the Men's College World Series. Here come the Kentucky Outliers.
“We’re hungry, man,” catcher Devin Burkes was saying Friday after the Wildcats opened their regional with a 10-8 win over Western Michigan. “You can see with the way we play. Hungry.”
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The Wildcats took a 40-14 record into their own regional, including 14-5 against ranked opponents, and had four series sweeps in the shark tank that is the SEC. Â They scored at least three runs in an inning 69 times during the season, stole 109 bases, were 16th in the nation in fielding percentage and hit double figures in runs in 12 conference games. And they entered the tournament as the No. 2 seeded team in the land.
In other words, they have every reason to believe this journey can get to Omaha. Every reason except history. They are very aware in this neck of the SEC woods of the identity of the only conference program never to play in the Men's College World Series. “Oh yeah,” Burkes said. “Every year that’s the goal whether we’ve been there or not.”
Let us then spend an afternoon with — just maybe — the hungriest baseball program in the SEC, now that June is coming.
The first pitch is still 1 ½ hours away Friday when the blue army starts rolling into Kentucky Proud Park, racing for the best seats. You’d think this was Rupp Arena and Louisville was in town. That baseball’s broadened horizons have grabbed the basketball-loving public in Lexington is clear. “They were kind of rushing the gates right on the opening BP,” right fielder James McCoy would later say. “They have our backs the whole game."
And what does that mean to the players?
“Just puts the focus on the front of the jersey," McCoy says. "The big blue nation, they come out and support us whether it’s raining. It was Vandy and I was getting soaked.  Everyone else is still (sitting) in the outfield and they’re not running for cover. They pour their hearts into us.”
Nick Mingione, the recently minted SEC coach of the year, thinks so, too, and notes that the early arrivals would end up sitting in the hot sun for more than five hours to see the game.  “As our program has continued to try to climb and make adjustments and get better, our fans have done the same thing,” he said. “When they opened the gates, just to watch our fans, it was a surreal feeling.”
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Western Michigan comes into the game having blown through the Mid-American Conference tournament with three wins by a combined score of 29-3, and its pitchers had allowed three runs in 34 innings. Kentucky has three runs only eight batters into the game Friday and moves to an early 8-0 lead. But it would not be that simple as the Broncos somehow manage to score five runs and send 10 batters to the plate in the fifth inning despite getting only one ball to the outfield — three infield singles, a hit batter, a walk and a force play do the damage. But the Wildcats don’t blink, not after getting off the SEC treadmill, and eventually put the game away. Texas A&M transfer Robert Hogan comes out of the bullpen to shut down Western Michigan the last 3.1 innings, later looks back at the moment in such a charged atmosphere and decides, “Being here is probably the greatest decision I ever made.”
By general Kentucky acclimation, quieting the Broncos’ surge could largely be credited to the steel and poise acquired in going 22-8 in the SEC. “It’s just a matter of we’ve been through it before. We’ve been through it for 10 weeks in the SEC,” says McCoy, who breaks out of an 0-for-21 slump with a home run and three RBI.
“Over time you just get used to having to make a pitch, get used to having to make a play or an at-bat,” Mingione says. “Our team has been through a lot. I feel we’ve played that game right there I don’t know how many times. Whether it’s a 4-2 game or a 10-8 game, we’ve played it.
“I’ll be pretty upset if they hit the panic button.”
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After the game, Mingione sits at the press conference dais with three team members, one of them nine years old. That’s Reeves, his son. He had his baptism Thursday and pretty much the entire team showed up. “Pretty good five days,” Mingione says of his past week. “No. 2 national seed, your son gets baptized, you win game 1.”
And who knows what's to come? Kentucky was in the super regional in 2023 but acquired a bad case of the LSU flu, especially the Paul Skenes strain. The Wildcats made it that far in 2017 but were stopped by Louisville. Â It is a wall they desperately want to smash and there is considerable evidence this might be the time.
Mingione touches on several reasons why.
His players’ desire to get better, for instance. He had McCoy in the batting cage for hours, trying by his count 30 different things on the swing to help break the slump. “It was like a marathon. But to his credit, he just wanted to be coached,” Mingione says.
Also the Wildcats’ aggressiveness at the plate and on the bases. “We’re at our best when we attack and we force people to make plays,” he says. “We feel like if we do that to 18-to-24 year olds, over time they’re going to make mistakes.”
Also the fact these Wildcats understand how they must go about accomplishing this history-making.
“It’s been a lot of work, a lot of ups and downs. I’ve learned a lot as coach. I haven’t been perfect . . . I just want to compliment this team, they’re so good at moving on to the next thing. We talk all the time, how this win will expire at midnight, and it will. They move on immediately. We look up at one point, we’re 15-1 in the league. This is incredible. How are you able to do that? They literally have taken each game and they move on and they say next, it’s a new day. Win or lose, next, next, next.
“Ultimately it’s a lot like building a house. You have to do it one brick at a time and you have to keep laying them. And if one gets off, you’ve got to reset it and just keep going. You do it enough times for a long enough period of time, after a while, you look up and it’s wow, look at this, We built a mansion.”
In the college baseball language of June, mansion means Omaha. The Kentucky Wildcats have only heard of the place, but maybe for not much longer.
