Texas Christian rose to new heights in 2014 and 2015, producing the greatest two years in program history. The Horned Frogs made back-to-back College World Series appearances, won both a Big 12 Conference regular season and tournament championship and were twice awarded national seeds in the NCAA tournament.

But the core of those teams broke up after TCU ended last season with a loss to Vanderbilt in the final four of the CWS. The Horned Frogs lost three of their four starting pitchers, their closer and five regulars from their lineup.

TCU still had talent on hand and brought in the seventh-ranked recruiting class led by two-way star Luken Baker, but a step back seemed natural. Instead, the Horned Frogs made it back to Omaha for the third consecutive season.

Coach Jim Schlossnagle said going into the fall, he thought the Horned Frogs had the talent to get back to the NCAA Tournament, where their success would come down to how well they were playing in June. But a third straight CWS appearance was not on his mind.

“I think three straight Omaha trips is absurd,” Scholossnagle said. “Because everybody is so good in college baseball these days and they’re trying to be good. The margin for error has never been thinner just to win a baseball game.”

Schlossnagle has made the absurd possible at TCU. Since 2004, his first season at the school, he has built TCU into a national power, taking a program that had made only two NCAA tournament appearances in its history to regionals in all but one season and reaching the CWS four times.

Righthander Mitchell Traver, a redshirt junior, said the Horned Frogs’ success all stems from Schlossnagle.

“It all starts at the top, right?” Traver said. “It’s a championship culture. Coach Schloss embodies it the best. He’s on us all the time. As soon as the season ends, whenever that may be, it’s always what can we do to be better next year. No matter what we’re working with.”

2016 will go down as one of Schlossnagle’s best coaching jobs. Not only did TCU have to replace all the departing talent, it also had to overcome injuries to Traver, its projected Opening Day starter, and center fielder Nolan Brown that left it without two of its few key returning players for most of the season. But, at the end of the year, the Horned Frogs were one of the last four teams standing in college baseball with a record of 49-18. For those reasons, Schlossnagle is Baseball America’s 2016 College Coach of the Year.

Budding Power

Schlossnagle was hired by TCU on July 9, 2003, following two years at UNLV. At the time, TCU was in Conference USA, still recovering from being left out in the cold when the Southwest Conference disintegrated in 1996. Schlossnagle was 32 and rising quickly through the coaching ranks. He began his career as an assistant at Elon, his alma mater, spent a year as an assistant at Clemson and eight years working under Rick Jones, the 2005 College Coach of the Year, at Tulane.

Now 45 years old, Schlossnagle is still on the young side for a coach at a powerhouse. But TCU athletic director Chris Del Conte said he has an advanced understanding of the game.

Del Conte came to TCU in 2009, after three years as Rice’s athletic director. At both schools, he inherited an outstanding baseball coach, and he sees similarities between Schlossnagle and Wayne Graham, the 1999 College Coach of the Year.

“Wayne Graham is 83 years old, greatest baseball mind, I ever thought, until I met Schloss,” Del Conte said. “Whatever it took Wayne to get in 80 years, Schloss has in 45. They’re both the same. They’re the same baseball mentality. It’s phenomenal.”

At TCU, Schlossnagle has found what he wants in a program. He said part of what attracted him was the commonalities between TCU and Tulane: it is a private school in a major metropolitan area, allowing him to sell recruits on a valuable degree and affording him a large population base from which to draw both fans and players. TCU doesn’t have the need-based financial aid some other private schools have available for their recruits, but it had an administration committed to getting better and getting the school back into an elite conference.

“I felt like everything was in place except for the baseball stuff,” Schlossnagle said. “We just needed to make the baseball stuff better. And that’s something that, for the most part, is within our control.”

So Schlossnagle set about building TCU into a powerhouse. He brought in assistants Randy Mazey and Todd Whitting, the first in a series of shrewd hires for his coaching staff. Both are now head coaches (Mazey at West Virginia and Whitting at Houston), and they made for a strong staff right away.

TCU had success from the start of Schlossnagle’s tenure. In his first year, the Horned Frogs won what was then a program record 39 games and claimed the CUSA Tournament championship (the first conference tournament title in program history) to reach the NCAA tournament for the first time in a decade.

They would only build from there, bringing in better and better players, adding conference championships and win after win. Less than four years into his tenure, Schlossnagle was already the third-winningest coach in program history (he has since moved to No. 1 on TCU’s all-time wins list).

Whitting said the rise of TCU’s program all began with Schlossnagle.

“There are very few places in the country where you can take over the head coaching job and start it from scratch and call it your own,” Whitting said. “Literally everything there is his. He didn’t inherit a great tradition of wining or Omaha appearances or a tradition of MLB players. It’s pretty special to be able to put stamp on a place like he has at TCU.”

Schlossnagle credits his assistant coaches throughout his tenure for helping him build the program. His current staff of associate head coach Bill Mosiello and pitching coach Kirk Saarloos is no different.

“I have an incredible amount of confidence in our coaching staff,” Schlossnagle said. “This is the best coaching staff that I’ve ever been a part of.”

Schlossnagle’s vision has helped shape all aspects of TCU’s program. Lupton Stadium opened the season before he was hired, but has been added to several times to keep pace with the Horned Frogs’ growth. The most recent addition, which was completed before this season, was for a new team facility, including the locker room and coaches’ offices.

The facility also includes a classroom, which was a special request of Schlossnagle. Del Conte said he was surprised when Schlossnagle asked for the classroom.

“I remember thinking to myself, ‘That’s odd,’” Del Conte said. “And he goes, ‘The classroom exists because that’s where I do my best teaching.’

“The mental part of the game is overcoming failure. Three out of 10, you bat .300, there’s still failure. And how do you overcome failure? To be successful, every little thing, he’s meticulous in all his details.”

Already Home

By his estimate, Schlossnagle’s house is 500 yards from Lupton Stadium. He can see the park from his front porch and walks to work. Saarloos lives in the neighborhood and often drives a golf cart to the stadium. Football coach Gary Patterson was Schlossnagle’s next-door neighbor until he recently moved to a new house a mile up the street. Former players Matt Carpenter, Brandon Finnegan and Bryan Holliday all have houses nearby and return to Fort Worth in the offseason.

The neighborhood’s convenience and camaraderie are all a part of TCU’s selling point. And it’s a big part of the reason Schlossnagle feels at home.

“There’s no other place like it, in terms of an opportunity to live right on campus, raise a family and coach at a place that’s committed at the highest level,” he said.

Schlossnagle will be home at TCU for many years to come. The day after the Horned Frogs returned from Omaha, he signed a six-year contract extension. A week earlier, Del Conte said it was his job to keep Schlossnagle happy, but admitted that isn’t difficult.

“He’s the most low-maintenance guy we have,” Del Conte said.

There is, however, one more thing Schlossnagle wants. He is still missing a national championship from his trophy case. With nearly the entire roster returning next year, in addition to another solid recruiting class put together by Saarloos, TCU will likely enter next season as one of the favorites.

Schlossnagle has already begun preparing the Horned Frogs for the kind of expectations what will be laid on them next season. In his final meeting with the team after this season, he told them their challenge for next year will be to deal with the pressure of being preseason favorites.

“The problem is none of those teams are still playing and none of those teams were playing in the final four of the College World Series,” Schlossnagle said. “So what’s going to be different about us that’s going to allow us to go where we want to go? Just the whole thing of keeping blinders on and keeping your head down and just doing the work. Playing like you’re a champion, but preparing like you’re the underdog.”

Schlossnagle knows that sounds like clichéd coach-speak. But there is little doubt he will find a way to get the Horned Frogs to buy in. The culture he has created at TCU is built on a foundation of hard work. And, for 13 years, it has helped Schlossnagle make the absurd a reality.