For TCU baseball, home regional no sure thing as postseason nears

TCU baseball fans have gotten used to seeing NCAA postseason events at Lupton Stadium.

They might not see one this year.

The Horned Frogs are near the cutoff for the 16 teams that will host a regional, the four-team tournament that marks the first round of the national playoffs. TCU (33-12, 11-7 Big 12) sits third in the Big 12, behind Texas Tech (38-13, 17-4) and Oklahoma State (31-15, 12-6), and DIbaseball.com projects the conference to produce only one regional host.

“I think we have a lot of work to do for something like that,” TCU coach Jim Schlossnagle said. “We just need to keep ourselves in position to be in a regional. We’ve got to play well and finish as high in the conference as we possibly can.”

But to land a home regional this year, the Frogs would have to make a major push. They enter this weekend’s series at Baylor trailing leader Texas Tech by 4  1/2 games and second-place Oklahoma State by one game. But in both cases, the lead is effectively more because both teams won the season series against TCU.

The Frogs ranked eighth when they hosted last year’s regional and 11th when they hosted in 2014. They were 19th for their regional in 2011, 15th in 2010 and 10th in 2009.

TCU’s remaining opponents rank 133rd (Baylor), 106th (Stephen F. Austin) and 122nd (Kansas State) in RPI. But the Big 12 tournament in two weeks in Oklahoma City will offer a chance to pad those credentials.

“I don’t think anything’s out of the question, especially if we were to play well down the stretch and do well in the conference tournament,” Schlossnagle said.

Ironically, Lupton Stadium is more prepared than ever to host postseason events. The school added terraced seating behind right field to help accommodate larger crowds. Last year’s Super Regional series against Texas A&M drew the two largest crowds in stadium history, and the series against Texas Tech two weekends ago was the most well-attended regular-season series at Lupton.

TCU has come to expect to host regionals and has prepared to host regionals.

“It’s amazing how that’s changed in the last seven, eight years,” Schlossnagle said, asked about such expectations. “That’s part of it. That’s what happens at the elite programs in the country. If you’re at LSU or Texas or Florida State or Miami, that’s what the fans have grown accustomed to. And that’s OK. I have no problem with that. Believe me, there’s nothing better that I like or the players like than to have that regional experience at home with our fans.”

But this remains a young TCU team with inexperienced pitching. Little remains from the teams that made back-to-back trips to Omaha. If a home regional isn’t in the future for this Horned Frogs team, maybe it shouldn’t be a surprise.

“Programs go through that. Ebbs and flows,” Schlossnagle said. “You never know what your story’s going to be. I think the most important thing for our team, with new players, was to make sure we’re in the NCAA tournament so they get that experience. And then we’ll just see how we play when we get there.”

This story was originally published May 12, 2016 at 5:48 PM with the headline "For TCU baseball, home regional no sure thing as postseason nears."