Observations: Kentucky notches key series win at Texas A&M

The Wildcats took 2 out of 3 against a slumping, but talented, Aggies squad.

Photo by Tyler Ruth of UK Athletics

Texas A&M entered the 2025 college baseball season as the consensus No. 1 team in the country. The national runner-up from a season ago, the Aggies returned the best roster — on paper — in the country despite losing head coach Jim Schlossnagle to rival Texas the day after game three of the national championship series.

The promotion of Michael Earley made sense in the short term because it was the best opportunity to keep an ultra-talented group together, but the early returns have been a disaster. Texas A&M came into this weekend series against Kentucky at 0-6 in the SEC, having been swept by Alabama and Vanderbilt.

Kentucky, meanwhile, entered this weekend teetering a bit. While it’s still early, the Wildcats gave away two winnable games against Auburn last weekend before salvaging game three behind dominant pitching from sophomore Ben Cleaver and redshirt freshman Tommy Skelding. But a 9-3 loss to Xavier on Tuesday night was an uninspiring performance and marked the second straight week that Kentucky dropped a midweek game. Although midweek losses will happen even to the best of teams throughout the year, the Wildcats had been excellent at home in the midweek in recent years against non Power-4 opponents. All that is to say that this weekend was an opportunity for Kentucky to turn things around against a talented yet very disappointing team.

For the most part, Kentucky delivered in College Station. The Wildcats blew a 7-1 lead on Friday night in a disappointing loss, but rallied the next two days to clinch their first SEC series victory of the season. The wins pulled Kentucky to 4-5 in the league, setting up an intriguing next two weeks with a home series against Ole Miss next weekend, then a road game at Louisville in the midweek before returning for another home series against Texas.

Before we get into that, here are three observations from the series victory over Texas A&M: