Post-game quotes and notes with Gary Henderson

Posted at 10:24 p.m. EDT - Eric Lindsey, UK Media Relations

Whether or not you followed us on the live blog or not, I don't need to tell you how huge tonight's 8-7 victory at Louisville was for Kentucky. It snaps a seven-game losing streak, it came in dramatic fashion, and best of all, it was against archrival Louisville.

But don't take it from me. Look at what UK Coach Gary Henderson had to say about the game:

• Henderson spoke earlier today about the guys pressing because of the losing streak. After letting a 4-1 lead turn into a 6-4 deficit, the Wildcats could have folded. They didn't. "I was really pleased and proud to see it because that's certainly been an issue for us here the last couple of weeks, but they responded," Henderson said. "If I know exactly why, I would do it every time. If we would have had that earlier in the year - we came back many times but for whatever reason, the last couple of weeks it hasn't happened for us. I was really pleased to see it tonight and hopefully we'll continue forward with it."

• Braden Kapteyn was downright nasty in the later innings. He pitched three innings, gave up one run on one hit, struck out four and his slider was literally unhittable. The pitch was breaking from one corner of the plate to the other. "He's showing up, isn't he?" Henderson said. "He's growing up. He's learning how to slow the game down a little bit. He's approaching it one pitch at a time, he threw different pitches for strikes, which is usually a recipe for success. Typically you're going to enjoy that outing, and that's what he did tonight."

• Again, I can't stress how big of a hurdle that seven-game losing streak was. To break it against a solid team, the program's most heated rival, is "Huge," Henderson said. "Anytime you drop more than one game, you're on a losing streak. To get back in the win column is big. To do it in the way that we did is even better, because what that does is it gives you a perspective, a frame of reference that you can win when you're behind and you don't have to play from ahead all the time to get a win, so yeah, it's a huge win. And it's Louisville - it's a big game."

• Looking ahead, UK obviously has a date with Mississippi State and former UK Coach John Cohen. Henderson said it's just another SEC series. "There won't be any special motivation because it's Coach Cohen," Henderson said. "It's just another weekend and we obviously need to win a series."

• Clint Tilford, who got the start, will get lost in tonight's dramatics, but he shouldn't. His line - three earned runs in 4.2 innings - doesn't look overly impressive, but two of those runs came from runners he left on base when he departed the game. Henderson said his pitch count was high so he took him out, but it's hard to argue a better outing from Tilford this year. "I thought he was absolutely outstanding," Henderson said. "If we had scored a few more runs earlier in the game, I would have left him in. But I didn't want him have to leave after such a good outing with a chance to have that thing tired, and he was tired. That was the most pitches he's thrown in a long time. I was really pleased with Clint, really proud of him and I thought he was outstanding."

• A number of guys came through for UK. Chris Bisson was 2-for-5, Chris Wade was 2-for-4 with two RBI and Bryan Rose knocked in the game-winning run, but Chad Wright was an absolute beast at the top of the lineup. Wright, an unheralded recruit coming into UK, has already blossomed as a freshman. "It reaffirms that recruiting is not an exact science," Henderson said. "You just do the best you can and when the kids get here, you don't know how they're going to respond. He keeps getting better and better and better. He slows down at the plate, he plays really good defense, he can think - the game does not speed up on him - and I'm just really pleased that we've got him. He's going to turn out to be a really great player here."

Tennis rankings

Posted at 2:11 p.m. EDT - Eric Lindsey, UK Media Relations

The men's tennis team moved up two spots in the latest Intercollegiate Tennis Association rankings. The Wildcats leapfrogged Texas A&M and Texas to move into the No. 12 spot.

Despite losing both matches over the weekend, the women remained in the top 25. The Wildcats dropped from No. 23 to No. 24 in the latest rankings.

Senior Bruno Agostinelli is ranked the No. 5 player in the nation in singles and the Kentucky duo of Agostinelli and sophomore Brad Cox is ranked the No. 18 doubles team.

Live baseball blog tonight

Posted at 12:07 p.m. EDT - Eric Lindsey, UK Media Relations

In light of the heated rivalry with Louisville, Cat Scratches will be taking the trip to Louisville tonight to blog the UK-U of L baseball game.

We'll have in-game updates, stats and commentary throughout the game, live from Jim Patterson Stadium in Louisville. First pitch is slate at 6 p.m., but we should have the live blog fired up by about 5:45 p.m.

Hope to see you then.

Ending the skid: UK baseball searching for solutions to get back on track

Posted at 11:41 a.m. EDT - Eric Lindsey, UK Media Relations

Kentucky Coach Gary Henderson has his hands full in his first year at the helm of the baseball program.

Losing All-Americans Collin Cowgill and Sawyer Carroll, along with several other key seniors, Henderson knew he had a rebuilding job of sorts in his first year as a head coach at Kentucky. At 18-16 midway through the season, it's tough to characterize Kentucky as having a down year.

But there is no doubt that the Wildcats are trudging through a tough spell, a stretch Kentucky has not faced in years. Heading into Tuesday night's game at Louisville, the Wildcats are on a seven-game losing streak, the longest skid since 2005 when UK lost seven consecutive games halfway through the season.

It'd be easy for Henderson to put his finger one thing and declare it the problem, but whether a team is winning or losing, it's never that easy.

 "When you go through a rough spot, it's usually more than one thing that's not clicking," Henderson said. "But probably the biggest thing that's happened is just the inability to drive guys in that are on base. I think that's a pretty easy and accurate assessment.

"But when teams struggle, it's seldom one thing. Often the stress and pressure of failure leads to other areas breaking down."

The lack of offensive productivity would be the most glaring place to start with UK's current skid. The Wildcats are batting .292 overall as a team, third worst in the Southeastern Conference, and have driven in just 197 runs, second fewest in the league.

Coming into the season, just about everybody knew UK wouldn't match the record-setting offensive outpouring it had produced over the last three seasons. That's just not the case when a team replaces All-Americans with unproven and untested freshmen and sophomores.

But Henderson admitted that he had hoped to get more out of some his veterans. Junior center fielder Keenan Wiley has struggled out of the gates to a .244 average and senior third baseman Chris McClendon is just starting to get his feet under him after missing the 17 games this season with nagging injuries.

The younger Wildcats have actually taken on their new roles quite well. Sophomore second baseman Chris Bisson is hitting a team-best .380 at the dish, freshman outfielder Chad Wright is just above the .300 mark and freshman infielder Andy Burns has belted four home runs and 20 RBI.

But as Henderson said, it's not just one thing. So if it's not just the offense, what about the pitching?

Well, in large part, the pitching hasn't been that bad. UK's ERA sits just a tad over five runs a game, but that's been bloated by a couple of off days. If you take out the nine runs junior James Paxton gave up to South Carolina when he was battling tendinitis in his knee or the 20 runs UK surrendered to the Gamecocks on March 28 in an offensive marathon, then UK would have a "dramatically different ERA," Henderson said.

And if you've ever watched the UK starters take the hill, you'd notice the hurlers have big-league stuff. Paxton and freshman Alex Meyer had MLB scouts drooling over their arsenal of pitches earlier in the season, and senior Chris Rusin is lock to be taken in this year's MLB Draft.

It's the type of pitching that makes one wonder, if UK could somehow find a way to sneak into postseason play, it could win a few games based solely off the pitching.

"You go through a period where it's hard to drive guys in and you lose some close games, the kids start to put pressure on themselves and make them more difficult that it really needs to be," Henderson said.

And let's not overlook the schedule UK has faced this season. The Wildcats played a significantly tougher offseason schedule than the past few years, and they've faced the majority of the top SEC teams midway through the conference slate, including No. 1 Georgia last weekend.

"That's certainly a factor, there is no question," Henderson said. "But the bottom line is, those are the teams in our league and we have to beat them."

UK will have to beat the majority of the remaining SEC teams if it hopes to make the SEC Tournament. Only the top-eight teams will make the trip to Hoover, Ala., for the conference tourney, and at 4-11 in the conference, the Wildcats are in serious jeopardy of not making the cut.

With half the conference season still remaining, UK hasn't talked about the losing streak or making the SEC Tournament.

"There has been plenty of talk, but it's all about how we're going to get this thing turned around," Henderson said.

The solution?

"It's making things simpler," Henderson said. "When you struggle, kids tend to make things more difficult, they tend to make things more complex. What we do when things aren't going well is we tend to make them more complicated than they really are.

"What we need to do, is we need to do a really good job of the absolute basics. That is, when we're pitching, throw low strikes, get ahead in the count, use both sides of the plate and have a second pitch. When we're playing defense, we need to expect every ball to be hit to us. When we're hitting, we need to swing at strikes, we need to take balls and really focus on seeing the ball well and eliminate those thoughts of the result. And that's how you get through it."