Observations: Kentucky notches signature series win over Tennessee

Kentucky had been close in other SEC series this season, but the Wildcats finally secured their signature series win of 2025.

RHP Nic McCay and catcher Devin Burkes. Photo by Caleb Bowlin of UK Athletics

Kentucky entered Sunday’s game against No. 2 Tennessee in yet another rubber match. Now in its sixth SEC series this season, the Wildcats had been in four rubber matches so far and were just 1-3 in those serie games, a brutal string of frustrating losses that had defined their first half of league play.

But Kentucky flipped the script on a sunny Easter Sunday afternoon at Lindsey Nelson Stadium, routing the Volunteers 8-2 to claim their second SEC series victory of the campaign.

“Couldn’t be more of the guys because we continue to fight,” Kentucky coach Nick Mingione told Bat Cats Central. “They have real toughness and real belief, and there’s no way you can beat (Tennessee) on the road in their place two days in a row without having that, so I’m proud of the guys.”

With the win, the Wildcats improved to 8-10 in the league and picked up their eighth RPI Top 25 victory. Historically speaking, Kentucky is now in a position that at a .500 record over the final 12 SEC games should put it back in the NCAA Tournament field for the third straight season. Before last year, Kentucky had never appeared in two straight NCAA Tournaments.

Kentucky will soon turn its attention to a rematch with Louisville on Tuesday afternoon, but here are three observations from the weekend.

McCay delivers masterful performance

Given the situation Kentucky faced, I think there’s a case to be made that Nic McCay’s pitching performance was one of the great individual showings in recent Kentucky baseball history. Tennessee has been great at home in recent seasons under Tony Vitello and once again have a team ranked in the top-five. McCay, who competed well against another top-ranked team in Texas last week, showed why he was a coveted pitcher out of the transfer portal last summer.

The seventh-year senior gutted out 116 pitches and struck out a season-high 12 batters while giving up just three hits. The only run scored by the Vols came off a fielding error in the eighth inning by left fielder Cole Hage. McCay kept Tennessee’s hitters off balance and got better as the game went on. He had retired 14 out of 15 hitters before Hage’s error, which ended up being his final batter of the game.

“Coach (Dan) Roszel says all the time that pitchers need to be the tip of the spear, and that they need to be the toughest players on the field,” Kentucky coach Nick Mingione said. “I really believe that Nic McCay showed unbelievable toughness. He did it through his performance. He made pitch after pitch after pitch. He did it with his actions. He did it coming off the field. He did it in the dugout. He gave our team a lift and a level of confidence and toughness that we needed. That’s what it was going to take to win that game. We just fed off of that today. When you think about what he did, he did it through his performance, he did it in his actions after, he did it coming off the field, in the dugout. It was impressive.”