UK baseball’s NCAA tourney run is latest reward for Mitch Barnhart’s patience

With Kentucky baseball set to play in an NCAA Tournament super regional for the second straight season, these are heady times for the Wildcats program.

In assessing how UK baseball reached such heights, it is instructive to remember that when the 2023 season began, Cats coach Nick Mingione was widely perceived to be coaching for his job.

After directing Kentucky to a 43-23 mark and a berth in an NCAA tourney super regional in a magical first season as UK head man in 2017, Mingione went the next five years without leading the Wildcats back to the NCAA Tournament (recall, there was no NCAA tourney in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic).

By the time Kentucky bowed out of the 2022 SEC Tournament with a 33-26 mark and no realistic shot at an NCAA tourney at-large bid, the wolves were howling for Mingione’s job.

Frankly, based on results, there seemed good reason to think the wolves were right.

However, just as he had earlier done for football coaches Rich Brooks and Mark Stoops after their coaching tenures had gotten off to rocky starts, UK athletics director Mitch Barnhart kept Mingione when the easy decision might have been to cut the coach loose.

After the Cats defeated Indiana State 5-0 Sunday night at Kentucky Proud Park to win the NCAA Tournament’s Lexington Regional, Migione thanked Barnhart for the administrative patience that allowed Kentucky’s past two seasons of baseball success to reach fruition.

“I’m forever grateful to him for what he’s done to bless my family and this program,” Mingione said.

In an era when “fire the coach” seems the prevailing college sports ethos, Kentucky has supplied a pretty good counter-argument for the benefits that can come from staying the course.

Inheriting the Wildcats’ football program in 2003 just as harsh sanctions had been applied on the Cats after a Hal Mumme era NCAA scandal, Brooks began his UK tenure by going 4-8, 2-9 and 3-8.

Barnhart gave the veteran coach a fourth season, and after a 3-4 start, Kentucky went 5-1 down the stretch and beat Clemson in the Music City Bowl.

Having gone 12-29 to start his UK tenure, Brooks went on to finish 27-18 and lead the Wildcats to four straight bowl appearances, three of which the Cats won.

Taking over Kentucky football in 2013 off a 2-10 disaster, Stoops went 2-10, 5-7, 5-7 in his first three years — then lost the first two games of his fourth season, too.

Again, Barnhart stayed with a struggling coach. After his 12-26 start on the Kentucky sidelines, Stoops has subsequently gone 61-39 while leading UK to eight straight bowl games (with four bowl victories) and two 10-win seasons.

When Kentucky has had a quick trigger with coaches during the Barnhart era, there has usually been extenuating circumstances.

Men’s hoops coach Billy Gillispie (40-27 from 2007 through 2009) was a horrid “personality fit” at UK. He was let go after only two seasons.

Football coach Joker Phillips (13-24 from 2010-2012) and women’s basketball coach Kyra Elzy (61-60 from 2020 through 2024) were both continuity hires, elevated from assistant’s roles with the charge of keeping the good times rolling.

When each instead presided over clear slippage in their programs, Phillips was fired after three seasons and Elzy after four.

Moving forward, because of the lucrative nature of their TV contracts, members of the SEC and the Big Ten should have a substantial athletics resources advantage over every other university in every other league.

One surefire way to negate that advantage is to create a lot of non-productive money by tying it up in mega-million-dollar coaching buyouts.

To avoid that, you need an AD who makes good coaching hires.

You also need an athletics director who has a tough enough hide to stick with the coaches he/she believes in even when things get tough.

Following Kentucky’s win over Indiana State, Mingione said that, after UK’s 2020 season was ended after 17 games due to the COVID-19 outbreak, he used his unexpected free time to launch a self-evaluation of his stewardship of the UK program.

“I actually used that time to evaluate every area of our program,” Mingione said. “I called former players and asked them about me, what the players thought about me, our culture, what I could do better.

“I got some really tough feedback. And things I didn’t, quite frankly, want to hear. But I believe feedback is (the) breakfast of champions. I made adjustments, we made adjustments on how we recruit, how we evaluate, what fits into this ballpark.”

Even after that, it took Mingione three seasons to lead Kentucky back into the NCAA Tournament.

Now, for the second year in a row, UK baseball stands two wins away from making its first-ever trip to Omaha, Nebraska, to play in a College World Series.

Just as it did with Rich Brooks and Mark Stoops, Kentucky’s administrative patience with Nick Mingione has paid off big.

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