FGCU baseball coach Dave Tollett was not surprised to learn earlier this week that former assistant Nick Mingione was hired to be the head coach at Kentucky.

'Great guy. He's intense. He has a passion and love for the game of baseball,' said Tollett, who added Mingione to his staff in 2002 and credits him with getting the Eagles program started. 'Tremendous work ethic, and he's been under some good people.'

Mingione, a 1996 Mariner High graduate who spent a semester coaching at FGCU, worked the last eight seasons as an assistant to John Cohen at Mississippi State. He coached third base and built a reputation has a solid recruiter with the Bulldogs. Prior to his time at Mississippi State, Mingione spent two seasons at UK as an assistant under Cohen in 2006-07. UK won 33 SEC games in those two seasons, including its first SEC championship in 2006.

'It's great for Nick, great for his family, great for the University of Kentucky and great for Mariner High School,' said Steve Larsen, the Tritons' athletic director who coached Mingione in high school and brought him aboard to coach at Mariner after he graduated from Embry-Riddle University. 'He was a rallier, a positive influence and well motivated.'

Mingione, 37, was given a five-year contract worth an average of $475,000 per year. Mingione proudly wore his 2006 UK SEC championship ring on one hand throughout the introductory news conference Tuesday and repeatedly alluded to the school's lone SEC title when was an assistant.

'I've been a part of a championship here,' Mingione said. 'We've done it before, and the goal is to do it again.'

Larsen has seen Mingione's ability to influence players at work. For the last 15 years he's worked at Perfect Game events and has asked players who Mingione was recruiting what they thought of him.

'They would say, 'We love him. He's so personable, and we trust him,'' Larsen said.

Mingione replaces Gary Henderson, who resigned on June 1 after going 258-199 with the Wildcats since 2008.

'John Cohen speaks the world of him,' said Tollett, whose known Mingione since his high school days. 'Me and John are pretty good friends. I actually am the one who called John about Nick about the job. I said, 'This is the guy you need.''

Cohen hired Mingione as a volunteer assistant at Kentucky for $1,000 per month. At the time Cohen did not realize how difficult that tiny salary made Mingione's living arrangements.

'Because Nick didn't have much money he literally slept in our clubhouse at Kentucky,' Cohen said. 'He couldn't afford an apartment. He was working 20 hours a day anyway, so the four hours he would sleep he'd just go sleep on a couch in the clubhouse.'

'I learned a long time ago not to focus on what you don't have,' Mingione said. 'You will drive yourself crazy if you do that.'

Early in his introductory news conference, Mingione noted he 'grew up poor' in a family where his parents worked multiple jobs but still struggled to make ends meet. As an assistant coach at Embry-Riddle, where he spent three seasons after leaving FGCU, Mingione traded baseball lessons for a free apartment.

When that apartment was destroyed by a hurricane, he actually made money on from the funds provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency for the value of the property lost in the storm.

'I knew Nick didn't come from great means, but I remember when he first started at Kentucky he said, 'Coach, I live better on their bus' — the one they used to ride to get to close road games — 'than I've ever lived in my life.' That stayed with me,' Larsen said. 'Although he came from marginal means, he's now living the big life.'

So it is easy to understand why Mingione might not be focused on the lack of a state-of-the-art stadium at UK. Being the northernmost program in the Southeastern Conference and the lagging facilities have long painted Kentucky as a difficult place to win in baseball. Competing against SEC powerhouses from states where prevalent academic scholarships can turn college baseball's scholarship limitations into a bidding war only complicates the task.

'The fact that we don't have a stadium, I think everybody knows that, but I'm not going to be the guy or the coach to focus on what we don't have,' Mingione said. 'I'm going to ask our players every single day to be appreciative of everything they have, and there's a lot of resources here to win and we've done that before.'

The good news for Mingione is if UK athletic director Mitch Barnhart has his way, the stadium issue will stop being a negative soon. Barnhart reported the finishing touches to plans for a new $45 million facility are close to being completed.

'People may say the job is tough,' Mingione said. I'm going to say any job in the Southeastern Conference is tough and every job has its challenges. But this is a place I wanted to be at because I believe in my heart we can win here and we're going to win here. If I didn't believe that I would have never come.'

He remains confident of being able to duplicate the success Cohen and his staff achieved at UK in 2006. 'I'm one of these people that needs to know when I show up every day, I need to have a plan,' Mingione said. 'Our players need to understand. We will mention Omaha on a daily basis. We're trying to get to Omaha. If you get to Omaha, you have a chance to win a national championship.'

Naples Daily News reporter Dana Caldwell and Louisville Courier-Journal reporter Jon Hale contributed to this report.