Nick Mingione, Jay Johnson Give Thoughts on Lengthy Weather Delay Before LSU's 14-0 Win Over Kentucky
BATON ROUGE, La. — Before LSU blew away Kentucky 14-0 in game one of its Super Regional on Saturday, weather, or a lack thereof, took center stage.
An initial start time of 3 p.m. EST was delayed due to "an increased chances of storms throughout the afternoon." As a new start time of 8:06 was announced, an expectation for rain arose.
Instead, there was nothing but clear skies atop Alex Box Stadium for the entirety of the delay. Lightning within an eight-mile radius can also call for delays, but that also turned out to not be in the cards. Eventually, both teams returned to the field, only for the game to be delayed once again.
A 9:06 start time was announced, but only then did rain and ominous clouds begin to make an appearance. With an expectation to actually begin the game dwindling, one final delay to 10:06 did the trick.
Kentucky head coach Nick Mingione and LSU skipper Jay Johnson had multiple conversations with NCAA officials across the day in what turned out to be a seven-hour inclement weather delay that featured basically no inclement weather.
Both Mingione and Johnson spoke to reporters on Friday and gave their thoughts on the handling on potential inclement weather, calling for full caution.
“We cannot do that. We cannot start a game if we feel like the rain’s coming," Mingione said. "If we were to start a game or not start a game, you know, none of us want to do that. But I just have our complete trust in the people doing it. Especially the job that the staff here at LSU did last time."
"We're going to watch the weather all the way up until game time. We will not start the game unless we have a window to play the game," Johnson stated.
Kentucky dealt with inclement weather when it played LSU in Baton Rouge during its regular season series back in April, as thunderstorms delayed the beginning of the third game, which the Tigers eventually won 7-6 to win the series two games to one.
Mingione was complimentary of the job done by the LSU staff earlier this season and gave his confidence in the right decisions being made by those involved:
"You can't imagine being a coach not knowing what's going to happen, there's some gamesmanship and all, we've all had those thoughts, but the people here at LSU, they could not have done better and we would just trust them. And they know the weather better than we do. We'll trust them and I feel confident they'll make the right call. If not, we're not blaming them because we can't predict the weather."
Despite the uniqueness of the situation and the questions surrounding the need for a delay in the first place, both HCs held firm in their answers about the NCAA handled choosing when and when not to play on Saturday:
"I sat right there yesterday and answered that same question and just basically said 'look, the weather's gonna be what it is, we're gonna trust whoever makes the calls and we're gonna live with it. We're not gonna point any fingers or make excuses, so that'll be my same answer to that," Mingione said.
"They did a great job of keeping us in the loop with communication. Myself, Jay (Johnson), we were there, everything that was talked about, was communicated to the coaches, they basically told us when we were playing and when we weren't. When the weather was coming and when it wasn't. They did all the communication ... I grew up in the state of Florida, I understand the weather, it can be a challenge sometimes. They made the calls and they told us when to play. We got the game in."
Johnson, who clarified that it is the NCAA who makes the final decisions, agreed:
"I'm very comfortable with the process of what happened," Johnson said. "The largest window of lightning was at 3 p.m. (CDT) if you looked at it from every angle. I mean, this is a professionally run tournament as there is in college athletics… we were on a call with the National Weather Service and if you listened to that call, you would understand why we didn’t start the game…. With that being said, as I said earlier, the stars of the game are those fans up there — they didn't get discouraged or distracted by it. They showed up. They showed up right.”
UK first baseman Hunter Gilliam was also asked about the unusual nature of the day, but didn't lean into any excuses:
"Our mindset is whatever happens — good. If we would've pushed it back until 2:00 a.m., we're ready to go. The result wasn't what we wanted, but, the whole waiting around, that didn't have too much to do with it, we just didn't play our best game tonight."
A game recap can be found here. Thoughts from Mingione and Gilliam can be found here. Game two of the series is set for 6:06 p.m. EST on Sunday, June 11.
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