Another gauntlet awaits Kentucky in the SEC

In 2022, only three teams in the country played at least 30 games against teams in the RPI top 25. Those three schools – Kentucky, Alabama and Arkansas – all reside in the SEC. For the Wildcats, it will be another season of facing top competition week in and week out. 

D1baseball.com released its preseason top 25 last week. Of Kentucky’s 52 scheduled games, 23 will come against opponents ranked in D1’s top 25. Half of the Wildcats’ SEC games will come against teams projected inside the top 10, including road series at preseason No. 1 LSU and No. 2 Tennessee. 

In addition to LSU and Tennessee, Kentucky will have weekend series against Texas A&M (No. 5), Florida (No. 7), Vanderbilt (No. 10), Alabama (No. 20) and South Carolina (No. 23). UK will also play its annual two games against in-state rival Louisville, which came in at No. 16 in D1’s rankings. 

Baseball America projects an even more top-heavy schedule. D1 and Baseball America agree that LSU and Tennessee are the two best teams in the country entering the season. However, Baseball America holds Florida (No. 3), Louisville (No. 5) and Vanderbilt (No. 6) in higher regard than D1. Texas A&M comes in at No. 7 in Baseball America’s rankings. That amounts to 17 games for Kentucky against teams ranked in the preseason top seven. Alabama and South Carolina, however, did not make an appearance in Baseball America’s preseason top 25.

Preseason projections, of course, are educated guesses from the folks who follow this sport closer than anyone. Some teams will inevitably outperform preseason expectations while others will underperform, but there’s no question that life in the SEC is tougher than in any other league. Kentucky will once again experience it in 2023.  

THE TOUGHEST STRETCH

None of this year’s schedule could be defined as easy once conference play begins, but there’s a particular stretch in April that could be brutal. Upon completing a road series at Georgia – a team that made an NCAA regional last year – on April 9, Kentucky will play 11 of its next 12 games against teams ranked in the top 10 according to Baseball America. The Wildcats travel to Louisville on April 11, then go to Baton Rouge for a three-game set against preseason No. 1 LSU before returning home for a midweek game against Xavier at Kentucky Proud Park. The LSU series will conclude a stretch of seven straight road games. The Tigers, by the way, brought in the top high school recruiting class and the best transfer portal class in the country. LSU is considered the heavy preseason favorite to win the national championship in head coach Jay Johnson’s second season.

Xavier, a respectable Big East program that finished with a 33-27 record and No. 62 in the RPI last year, is certainly no guarantee for a midweek game. But the Wildcats immediately jump back into another difficult stretch, hosting Texas A&M on April 21-23 and then Louisville on April 25. Kentucky closes the month on the road against Vanderbilt. 

We’ll see if each of these teams live up to their preseason hype, but it appears going into the season that surviving the month of April will be one of the best indicators of what this Kentucky team can accomplish. 

A DIFFERENT NON-CONFERENCE APPROACH

In the first six seasons under Minigione, Kentucky had at least one non-conference series against a marquee Power-5 program or reputable baseball school. The Wildcats went to North Carolina in 2017 and hosted UC Santa Barbara, which made the College World Series the year before. In 2018, Kentucky played in – and dominated – the Shriners College Classic in Houston and hosted Texas Tech. The Wildcats returned the favor and went to Lubbock in 2019. The 2020 season opened in Fort Worth against TCU, and the Horned Frogs came to Lexington last season. The only scheduled Power-5 non-conference series in 2021 was at North Carolina, but it was canceled because of COVID-19.

This year’s schedule does not have a series against a Power-5 program in the non-conference, but it features two road series against non-Power-5 programs in Elon and Southern Illinois. According to Mark Etheridge of D1baseball ($), the Wildcats have the best non-conference opposing average RPI in the SEC from last year at 112. Kentucky’s eight road games in the non-conference are also the most among SEC teams.

Mingione believes Kentucky’s past non-conference schedules haven’t done enough to help its RPI, so he took a new approach this year.

“Our conference is obviously going to give us a great RPI,” Mingione told Bat Cats Central. “In return, we wanted to make a couple of adjustments to our non-conference schedule. We added an extra non-conference road schedule with a really good Southern Illinois team. Since we’ve been playing in Kentucky Proud Park, we’ve played one road series and three home series (in the non-conference). We added another non-conference road trip against a really quality opponent to try to assist in helping our RPI.”

Southern Illinois won the Missouri Valley Conference regular season in 2022 and finished with a 44-16 (16-5 MVC) record overall. The Salukis enter this season with an 84-36 record over the past two years, so this should be a series that helps the Wildcats in the RPI and will let Kentucky know where it stands heading into SEC play the following weekend.

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