The Southeastern Conference continues to shine as the nation’s premier baseball conference in 2025.

Nine of the top 25 teams featured in D1Baseball’s Preseason Top 25 Rankings hail from the SEC, including No. 1 Texas A&M, No. 3 LSU, No. 4 Tennessee, No. 5 Arkansas, No. 8 Georgia, No. 10 Florida, No. 16 Vanderbilt, No. 18 Mississippi State, and No. 19 Texas. Kentucky will face six of these nine teams in conference play this season.

Along with the nine teams ranked, other teams who were left out will likely be ranked at some point this season, including Alabama, Kentucky, Oklahoma, and South Carolina. Winning the conference or notching a top-four seed in the SEC Tournament will be an extremely hard challenge this season, especially with the inclusion of two more teams.

March 14-16: @ No. 8 Georgia

The Cats open SEC play in Athens, Ga. on March 14 at No. 8 Georgia. The Bulldogs, who were led by the No. 3 pick in the 2024 MLB Draft Charlie Condon, were swept by Kentucky last season in Lexington. That series served as Nick Mingione’s team’s coming out party, as the Cats outscored then No. 25 ranked Georgia 37-15 over the three game span.

This series will feature even more juice this season, as Kentucky will be facing former Cat Nolan McCarthy, who transferred to Georgia over the offseason. McCarthy spent three seasons at Kentucky (2021-2024), hitting for a .279 AVG with 13 home runs and RBI.

March 28-30: @ No. 1 Texas A&M

Following a home series against Auburn and two non-conference matchups against Murray State and Xavier, Kentucky heads to preseason No. 1 Texas A&M on March 28. These teams did not face off in the regular season in 2024, but they did meet in the Men’s College World Series. Kentucky fell to A&M 5-1, giving the Cats their first loss in the event.

April 11-13: vs. No. 19 Texas

Kentucky gets its first home series against a preseason top-25 team on April 11 when the No. 19 ranked Texas Longhorns travel to Lexington. The 2025 season will serve as the first in the conference for new head coach Jim Schlossnagle’s Longhorns. Texas is most recently known around the Kentucky program as the college Mitchell Daly transferred from before hitting the biggest home run in Wildcat baseball history.

April 18-20: @ No. 4 Tennessee

Although Tennessee lost some major stars from its 2024 Men’s College World Series winning team, Tony Vitelli’s Volunteers will open the 2025 season ranked at No. 4. Kentucky hosted Tennessee at Kentucky Proud Park in 2024 and lost the series two games to one. In 10 SEC series last season, it was just one of Kentucky’s two losses (Tennessee & South Carolina).

May 2-4: @ No. 18 Mississippi State

The road hits keep on coming as Kentucky travels to No. 18 Mississippi State on May 2 for a road series at Dudy Noble. The Bulldogs were the lone SEC team that did not encounter Kentucky last season.

May 15-17: @ No. 16 Vanderbilt

Finally, Kentucky closes out the regular season on the road in Nashville at No. 16 Vanderbilt. The Cats won the series over the Commodores in 2024, securing a share of just their second ever SEC Regular Season Championship in the process. It was Kentucky’s first series win over Vanderbilt since 2017.

Five of Kentucky’s six series against ranked teams are away from Kentucky Proud Park, where the Cats are 53-13 since the beginning of the 2023 season. Since the beginning of the 2023 season, Kentucky is 27-18 in games on the road.

Very few people have ever admitted they had a great weekend in Starkville, Mississippi. That is not true for the KSR crew — because we’ve never left the place with a loss.

Traveling down a few days early to beat the snowstorm, Steven Peake and I had plenty of time to kill. We stopped in Thursday evening for Mellow Mushroom trivia in Decatur (an overwhelming victory for the good guys, in case you were curious) before getting to Starkville at midnight. That led to a goofy campus tour on Friday, which can be found on our KSR YouTube channel, followed by some College Football Playoff action at the local watering hole that night — MSU coach Chris Jans also stopping in for a glass of wine while we were there.

From there, it was time for game day, talking with students camping out at Humphrey Coliseum for the anticipated matchup, followed by the heavyweight battle that night. You know the rest of the story, Kentucky taking down Mississippi State in a 95-90 victory, led by Jaxson Robinson with a career night. The Hump was rocking, but the Cats were able to overcome a truckload of adversity to pull off the win.

It was an all-time celebration and KSR was right there to capture it all, Peake absolutely CRUSHING it with behind-the-scenes access you won’t see anywhere else. If there is one thing you watch until tip-off vs. Texas A&M on Tuesday, make sure it’s the next edition of our KSR Roadtrip series.

Come for the game highlights and fan interactions, stay for the trivia and Hootie & The Blowfish singalong:

While you’re at it, check out our other MSU campus tour, which featured the craziest book selection you’ll ever see and what we thought was a near-death experience at our hotel:

More Kentucky News and Views on the KSR YouTube Channel

Kentucky Sports Radio has expanded its coverage of the Wildcats in the most ridiculous manner possible on our YouTube Channel. Here you will be able to find interviews with coaches and players, as well as commentary from the KSR crew. From Rapid Reactions following big events to our lengthy lineup of live shows, subscribe to the KSR YouTube Channel to stay up to date on everything happening around the Big Blue Nation.

Are new uniforms on the way for the Kentucky Wildcats? Mark Pope hinted at some special edition threads potentially set to debut this season.

The UK head coach was asked about any pregame superstitions he has ahead of tip-off, using that moment to slide in a nugget on a ‘little fashion show’ the team participated in on Monday.

“They have weaned me off of my superstitions, even to the point of — we had a little fashion show today of some prospective uniforms that we might break out this season,” Pope said during his call-in radio show. “(UK equipment manager) Mark Evans brought them in with a ton of sensitivity about, ‘Hey, I don’t want to jinx anything.’ I’m like, ‘I don’t believe in that, I’m not into any of that.’ So I don’t really have any game day superstitions.”

It comes just a couple of weeks after Pope was asked if he could bring back the denim uniforms his 1996 national championship team made famous three decades ago. His response at the time?

“Can I tell you this? I’m not really allowed to say this, so it’s just between the two of us: I’m working on it,” he said. “It’s amazing the red tape that we have to go through to make this happen, but we’re pretty passionate about trying to make that happen. We’ll see what we come up with. It’s definitely on my agenda of things to get accomplished.”

Pope said back in April that ‘we should put it in the hands of BBN’ when it comes to uniforms, saying he’d like to see fans vote on what the team wore at some point in the future.

“I would dig that. That would be awesome.”

Does that include denim?

“The denim, you know, I don’t know,” Pope continued. “I love the denim uniforms.”

We’re seeing a trend here, folks. Prepare accordingly.