How a Team-First, Game-by-Game Mentality is Pushing Kentucky Baseball to New Heights

"We're tight. This is closest I've ever been on any team, all the three years i've been here."

LEXINGTON, Ky. — Kentucky couldn't care less how it wins a baseball game. 

Whether it be through a pitchers duel, an offensive onslaught or something in-between, the Bat Cats are "gritty," as catcher Devin Burkes calls it. First baseman Hunter Gilliam called he and his teammates "a bunch of junkyard dogs."

Both Burkes and Gilliam have helped lead the charge of the teeth-gnashing group that's won 15 games in a row, the longest streak in the nation. Both have already earned national recognition for performances through the first 21 games of the campaign. 

Gilliam is slashing .421/.495/.737 while leading the team with five home runs. He's tied for fifth in the SEC with 33 RBIs. Burkes has 27 RBIs of his own, as well as four homers and nine doubles, the fifth most in the conference. 

Neither of them care. Nobody in the Kentucky clubhouse gives any thought to personal accolades. There is no focusing on the past. That mindset is one of the many reasons why head coach Nick Mingione is in love with his team. 

"I've been saying this a lot, but I can't help but keep saying I just love how this team is focused on what's in front of them and they're just not getting too far down the road," he said after a come-from-behind 9-3 victory over Eastern Kentucky on Tuesday night. "It's how we've been able to stay locked in."

The Cats rode high into its in-state battle with the Colonels at Kentucky Proud Park, fresh off a sweep of Mississippi State in their first SEC series of the season. The trio of victories not only extended the winning streak, but it also led to some national recognition, as there was a number next to Kentucky's name in multiple rankings for the first time since 2018. 

A three-run fifth inning from EKU gave it a 3-2 lead, putting UK on its heels after a flat start to the game. In danger of dropping a midweek game to the Colonels for the second season in a row, left-handed reliever Jackson Nove struck out three batters with a runner on third in the top of the seventh to keep the deficit at one, setting up a heroic moment for Burkes in the bottom of the inning. 

With the tying run on second, Burkes sat dead-red on a 3-1 fastball, depositing it 424 feet over the wall in left-center, giving Kentucky a lead that it would pile onto, thanks to one more run in the seventh, then four more unanswered in the bottom of the eighth. 

Kentucky teams of the past would've fumbled to the finish line with a loss in tight contests. While it's still early in the season, this version of the Bat Cats struts to the beat of a different drum.

"We're gritty, man, we're gonna get after it," Burkes said. "If we can't get you one way, we're gonna get you another way, you know what i'm saying? We come from all different angles, whether it be bunting, home runs, hitting, just in general, we're gonna fire all our bullets."

There's yet to be an outing this season where the clip hasn't been emptied. It's been an attack from all angles, too. Kentucky is fifth in the SEC in batting average (.318), second in on-base percentage (.452), fourth in ERA (2.89) and first in stolen bases (37).

Once all the bullets are fired, Mingione's team simply reloads, ready to give each and every opponent nine more innings of fight the next time they take the field.

"We've told them the most important game on our schedule is the one that we're playing right now," Mingione said. "So, we'll do everything we can to handle that and that's what we did tonight."

The team-first mentality hasn't just paid off on the diamond, either. It's brought — as Gilliam put it — "a lot of old guys who have never really won before" together in a major way.

"We're tight. This is closest I've ever been on any team, all the three years i've been here," Burkes said. "We're just committed man. You know, when things aren't going our way, we come together as a team instead of spreading out as individuals. So it's good. We got a great team camaraderie."

Mingione likened it to the type of heart shown from a national team competing in the World Cup:

"You can see the energy in our dugout, you can see the way the guys go. They're literally trying to do it for each other. When you have that brotherhood, it makes it fun."

That sheath-like solidarity is as big a reason as any for 15 consecutive wins, a feat that's hard to achieve at any level of baseball. It also prepares Kentucky for perhaps its toughest incoming stretch of the season, which will feature 11 of its next 15 games away from KPP. 

The road starts this weekend for three games against Alabama in Tuscaloosa, a place that UK hasn't won a series in since 1993. The 15-game span will also feature series at Georgia and No. 1 LSU. 

Send out LSU. Send out the 1998 New York Yankees. Send out the Lexington Counter Clocks. Kentucky doesn't care who's in the other dugout.

"Our team has been able to stay focused, you know, and the way they've been able to do that is, it doesn't matter if we're at home or on the road or who the opponent is, we're just going to continue to stay focused on the task at hand, and that's going to definitely pay some big dividends over these next 15 games," Mingione said. 

First pitch at Sewell-Thomas Stadium between UK and Alabama on Friday, March 24 is set for 7 p.m. EST. All three games in the series will be televised on SEC Network+.

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