Kentucky Baseball gets off to a hot start in 2018

Baseball season is finally here and for the 8^th ranked Kentucky Wildcats they opened the season with 4 games in three days to get what could be a special season started.

Friday night was the season opener as the Cats faced Wofford. It was a night full of homeruns as Kentucky got the scoring started in the 2^nd inning with a big 3-run bomb by Luke Heyer scoring Troy Squires and Kole Cottam.

The big bats continued in the 3^rd and 4^th as Tristan Pompey and Cottam both homer to extend the Cats lead. Also, in the 5^th Ben Aklinski was able to drive in Luke Becker as the Cats go on to take the season opener 6-1 as starting pitcher Sean Hjelle gets the win.

Saturday Kentucky would have a double header against USC Upstate.

In game 1, the Cats didn’t get the best start as after 3 innings they found themselves in a quick 5-0 hole. But in the 6^th the comeback started as Troy Squires scored on an error and Luke Heyer scored on a RBI groundout by Tristan Pompey, 5-2 Upstate.

After a big homer by Ben Aklinski in the 7^th the Cats were able to tie up the game in the 8^th after RBIs by T.J Collett and Kole Cottam. The game would go to extra innings and in the 10^th Cottam singled to score Becker and the Cats get the 6-5 win and Chris Machamer was the winning pitcher.

Game 2 of the double header started shortly after and it was a completely different game. Kentucky jumped on them early in the 2^nd with RBI doubles by Ryan Shinn and Trey Dawson, 2-0 Cats.

Kentucky would tack on more runs in the 4^th and 6^th to extend the lead to 7-0 and in the 8^th Luke Becker and T.J Collett both hit homeruns as the Cats take game 2 of the double header 10-3 and Justin Lewis was the winning pitcher.

The 4-game season opening weekend was capped off Sunday as the Cats faced Evansville.

Kentucky got on the board in the 1^st with an RBI double by Becker and took a 2-0 lead in the second off a RBI groundout by Luke Heyer.

Evansville got on the board in the 3^rd but it was the Cats that took control of the game with doubles by Collett and Johnson to plate four runs and give the Cats a 6-1 lead. Kentucky was able to get up to an 8-2 lead after a Heyer homer, but Evansville cut into the lead in the 7^th but it wasn’t quite enough as the Cats get the 8-4 win and Aaron McGeorge was the winning pitcher.

With all the hype that has been around this program after last year the team showed fight and showed exactly why this could be a special season for UK Baseball. The Cats’ home opener is Wednesday and they face Xavier at 4 pm EST.