Kentucky baseball knocked off Texas A&M 10-5 Sunday, wrapping up a series victory for the Wildcats against the preseason No. 1 team and improving their record to 17-9 at the midway point of the regular season.
The way it earned that win, though, wasn’t without some controversy.
The SEC has a rule that requires Sunday baseball games be completed by a certain time, and Kentucky took some extra steps to ensure that deadline was reached despite the final out not yet having been recorded, thus ensuring it a win.
Here’s a closer look at the SEC rule that helped the Wildcats over the weekend:
SEC travel curfew rule
The SEC has a rule in place, known as the getaway day travel curfew, that states that no new inning can begin after 4:30 p.m. local time during the final game of a series on Sunday. The rule is meant to provide a visiting team with ample time to get out of the stadium, get to its flight on time and back to campus for athletes to be ready for class the following day.
As understandable and well-intentioned as the rule is, it caused a bit of an uproar this past Sunday.
Kentucky was having its way with Texas A&M in the final game of their three-game series, taking an 8-2 lead into the bottom of the seventh inning. The Aggies soon started to chip away at that lead, however, with a triple from Terrence Kiel II and an RBI from Wyatt Henseler cutting the Wildcats’ advantage to 8-5.
Kentucky responded with two runs in the top of the eighth inning, padding its lead to 10-5, but from there, the Wildcats pulled several maneuvers that slowed the game down and got to 4:30 p.m. with their lead still intact. Kentucky head coach Nick Mingione began calling mound visits and defensive meetings. His pitcher would take the full 20 seconds on the pitch clock before winding up.
It didn’t go unnoticed by the other team.
With two outs, no runners on base and the clock at 4:29 p.m., first-year Texas A&M head coach Michael ...
