Sharing Big 12 title disappoints Frogs after four walk-off losses

TCU is “not real happy” about having to share the Big 12 regular season championship because the outright title was so close, coach Jim Schlossnagle said.

It would have been TCU’s second non-shared title in its five years in the league. The Horned Frogs won the regular season championship in 2015.

“We got walked-off four times in conference play. If we just win one of those games, then you’re the outright champions,” Schlossnagle said. “So that’s disappointing. But it’s felt like all year that we haven’t really hit our stride.”

TCU lost two walk-off games at West Virginia in April and two last week at Oklahoma, when two victories in the three-game series would have clinched the league crown. A fifth conference loss came on a ninth-inning solo home run by Kansas in Fort Worth. Another loss was by two runs, at Texas Tech, on a sixth-inning home run in the completion of a game suspended a day earlier with the Horned Frogs leading.

TCU (39-14) finished 16-8 in the league, tied with Texas Tech, which swept Kansas last weekend to catch the leaders. The Red Raiders gained the No. 1 seed in Oklahoma City thanks to their series victory over the Frogs in April.

“It’s kind of been three steps forward, one step back,” Schlossnagle said, evaluating the season. “To me, again, you can attribute that to starting pitching. That’s the name of the game. But just like I feel our team’s best baseball is ahead, I feel like our best starting pitching is ahead.”

TCU and Texas Tech are in opposite pools in Oklahoma City, so they won’t meet unless it’s in the championship game.

Schlossnagle said his team wants to repeat as tournament champions and that it would be good for their confidence.

“We need to prove to ourselves that we can live up to the standards of the program,” Schlossnagle said. “If there’s a trophy to win, we want to win it. We don’t want to do it here at all costs — in terms of bringing a pitcher back on short rest or anything like that. It won’t be the end of the world if we don’t. We went two-and-out in 2015 and everything was fine. I think for this particular team, we need to play well. Anything short of that would be disappointing.”

This story was originally published May 23, 2017 at 6:57 AM with the headline "Sharing Big 12 title disappoints Frogs after four walk-off losses."