LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) — College baseball works differently than college football or men’s basketball.
There’s a legitimate reward for success in the regular season. If you’re one of the top 16 teams in the country, you start the NCAA Tournament at home.
Your field. Your routine. Your fans. Your bed. All the intangibles that are impossible to quantify but figure to enhance your performance.
Well, with apologies to Joe Garagiola, baseball is a funny game. Over the first four days of the NCAA regionals, seven of the 16 seeded teams were thrown a curve ball and whiffed despite their homefield advantage. The stumblers included Arkansas, Clemson and Vanderbilt, three of the top six teams.
Monday night at spectacular Kentucky Proud Park, Kentucky avoided becoming the eighth seeded team to slide off the exit ramp. Getting five scoreless innings in relief from Mason Moore, the Wildcats scored twice in the bottom of the sixth and beat the Hoosiers, 4-2.
A sophomore from Rowan County, Moore finished with gusto, retiring nine of the last 10 hitters he faced. The final out came on ground ball to second by Indiana's Bobby Whalen, igniting a Kentucky celebratory dogpile between first and second base.
"It's what we've talked about since day one," said Darren Williams, who pitched the first four innings for UK. "Not being a good team, but being one of the best teams.Â
"I'm at a loss for words. It's the goal. It's the dream. We're two wins away from Omaha."
The Wildcats earned a trip to the Super Regionals where they will play Louisiana State in Baton Rouge. It’s a best-of-three series. The winner will proceed to the College World Series in Omaha, Nebraska.
Louisiana State rolled through its regional, winning all three games by a combined margin of 26-14. Although the Tigers are the No. 5 seed in the tournament, they were ranked No. 1 when Kentucky played them on the road in mid-April. LSU took that series, 2-1. After getting outscored 16-6 in the opener, UK rallied to win game two, 13-10, before losing the Sunday game, 7-6.
LSU’s game one starter will be Paul Skenes, who is considered the best college pitcher as well as the possible first pick in the MLB free-agent draft next month. Skenes is 11-2 with 179 strikeouts in 99 1/3 innings. Opponents are hitting .171 against him.
"They're a good team but we're a good team, too," UK catcher Devin Burkes said. "It's the team that plays the best, not the best team, that wins."
But that’s something for Kentucky to worry about next weekend. They have plenty of reasons to celebrate their 40th victory, which was achieved in front of a record crowd of 6,796 at Kentucky Proud Park.
For Indiana, it was a stinging defeat. The Hoosiers outhit the Wildcats 10-to-6 but IU left nine baserunners.
They loaded the bases with nobody out in the second but scored only once. They had a runner on third with no outs in the third and failed to score. Their first two runners reached base in the seventh, but again IU could not score.
"Sometimes baseball goes that way," IU coach Jeff Mercer said.
A day after coaches on the teams exchanged harsh words after the game, Mercer said that the long-running IU-UK baseball rivalry would go the way of the IU-UK basketball rivalry -- on hold. Mercer said the teams will not play next season because the Wildcats do not want to play in Bloomington.
"Kentucky canceled the series," Mercer said. "I'm not coming down here without a return trip. So it's done."
Always something between these two lovebirds, isn't it?
For the first two innings, this looked like it was going to be a 16-11, four-hour game.
Indiana opened with a single and double and scored one to start the game. Kentucky responded by getting its first three hitters on base and scoring twice. Five Hoosiers reached base in the top of the second but IU only scored once.
That was all the scoring until the bottom of the sixth. After Kentucky pummeled IU for 16 runs on Sunday, Indiana left-hander Ty Bothwell retired 14 of 15 hitters in one stretch — and the only UK baserunner reached on error.
Burkes opened the sixth with a double to left. A groundout got him to third where he scored on another double to left by Hunter Gilliam. Two batters later Gilliam also scored on another double, this one by Ryan Waldschmidt.
Moore took it from there. He did not allow a run over five innings, striking out five while allowing four hits and a walk.
"He throws a bowling ball at 94 miles per hour," Mercer said. "He's really good."
"He's got some of the best pitches in the entire country," Williams said. "I think he's going to be a big leaguer one day."
Now it's on to Baton Rouge, where the Wildcats will try to achieve something the program has never achieved -- a trip to the College World Series.
Copyright 2023 WDRB Media. All rights reserved.
