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Kentucky Wildcats Morning Quickies: Bourbon Day Edition

Today is Bourbon Day. Coach Cal is on a new NCAA committee inspired by his remarks. More.

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Good morning, ladies and gentlemen of the Big Blue Nation, and welcome to the Tuesday Quickies. Today is National Bourbon Day, and as an avid drinker of the brown water (along with many a denizen of A Sea of Blue), I encourage you all to celebrate with me with a nice tot of Four Roses Single Barrel, or whatever your favorite bourbon may be. Not now, of course… oh wait, it’s 5 o’clock somewhere…

Today’s lead Kentucky Wildcats story is the hiring of a new baseball coach at Kentucky, and his name is Nick Mingione. Jason has the full skinny here.

Mingione has been an assistant under former UK head coach and current Mississippi State head coach John Cohen. He was an assistant coach for two years at UK under Cohen, and has been with him at MSU since Cohen left UK to take the job at his alma mater.

I don’t know enough about baseball coaches to critique the hire in detail, but John Cohen is an outstanding coach, and not a day has gone by since he left that I didn’t wish we had him back. I hope all of Cohen has rubbed off on Mingione.

I’m sure most of your first thoughts, like mine, went to recruiting. The Clarion-Ledger has that angle covered for us:

Mingione coached third base for MSU but his greatest strength was his ability to recruit. Two weeks ago, he spoke about talking with SEC Freshman of the Year Jake Mangum nearly every day for two years during his recruitment. When Mangum arrived on campus, Mingione coached him in the outfield. He developed the skill of converting high school infielders into outfielders, including Mangum, Reid Humphreys and Brent Rooker.

Encouraging, to be sure. Also, HailState has a long and interesting piece on Mingione here.

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