TCU baseball takes UTA loss in stride as Big 12 play resumes

TCU coach Jim Schlossnagle did not walk away too upset about his team’s 8-1 loss at UT Arlington on Tuesday night.

He thought the Horned Frogs pitched well and played good enough defense outside of the stretch of seven consecutive hits with two outs and no one on base in the seventh inning of a 1-1 game.

“I’m not trying to discount a loss, and we’re certainly not pleased with it, but I didn’t have a problem,” Schlossnagle said. “I told the team after the game, ‘If I had something to yell at you about, I’d yell at you about it.’”

The loss ended a four-game nonconference winning streak for the Horned Frogs (21-5, 4-2 Big 12), who resume Big 12 play Thursday with a three-game series at Texas Tech (18-11, 3-3).

The Horned Frogs are second in the conference standings; Tech is fourth.

Schlossnagle said the hitting was better than it appeared, too.

“We had, by my count, 19 ‘hard contacts’ and one run to show for it,” Schlossnagle said. “It was one of the best, one of the top few games, we had performed all season in terms of the quality of our at-bats.”

Schlossnagle said the job for the Horned Frogs now is to “push to the side” the UTA loss and get ready for Tech, one of four Big 12 teams that made the College World Series last year.

“Lubbock’s always been a real exciting place to play,” Schlossnagle said. “It’s always been a very good series any time we play them. They’re an Omaha team that’s competing for the same things we are.”

Schlossnagle said his team knows Tech well.

“The thing about Tech is, you’re talking about a lot of kids from this area of the Metroplex, and we have a lot of guys, and we have some West Texas guys,” Schlossnagle said. “All the Texas guys grew up playing against each other. Everybody knows everybody. You just have to play well.”

Five of the top six teams in the Big 12 standings lost Tuesday night, including Texas Tech (6-5 at New Mexico), so the Horned Frogs weren’t alone in stubbing their toe.

“There are no bad teams,” Schlossnagle said. “If you don’t play well on a particular night, you’re going to lose. That’s just plain and simple. It’s proven every night in today’s college baseball. You can’t expect to play poorly and win most of the time.

“It’s definitely not the way we wanted to start the road trip, but it’s part of it. We can’t make it any bigger than it is or it’ll snowball into something else.”

This story was originally published April 1, 2015 at 4:41 PM with the headline "TCU baseball takes UTA loss in stride as Big 12 play resumes."